


Moving Forward

by Kamemor



Series: Eobard Lives AU [1]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: (by which I mean I'm writing Eobard as autistic because i have extensive headcanons on the subject), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Autistic Character, Eobard Lives AU, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-07-26 17:36:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 28,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7583506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kamemor/pseuds/Kamemor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Instead of Eddie sacrificing himself, the Reverse Flash is defeated by Cisco's sudden panic-driven discovery of the offensive portion of his powers. Now, seemingly cut off from the Speed Force and locked in a cell in the Pipeline, Eobard has to decide where to go from here. He's helped along by an endless string of visitors, each seeking something different from him: answers, closure, reassurance and, eventually, help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Divergence (Introduction)

As the Reverse Flash raised his hand to kill Barry, Cisco instinctively clutched at his own chest. He remembered the horrible sensation of a vibrating hand being plunged into his heart in that other timeline and froze, the memory terrible and all-consuming. He barely heard Reverse Flash ranting about how he was going to kill them all. But then he realised that the buzzing he felt in his chest was something else. It deepened, became almost solid and reassuring, like the hum of a powerful engine or the throb of a bass speaker. The pressure built and built and, without quite understanding what he was doing or why, Cisco raised his hand towards Reverse Flash.

“ **_I always win, Flash_ ** ,” the blur said in his terrifyingly distorted voice, and as he pulled his hand back to deal the final blow, the pressure in Cisco’s chest burst out through his outstretched hand.

“NO!” he yelled, as a wave of energy blasted from his hand and slammed into Reverse Flash. It threw him backwards, away from Barry, and he crashed into the floor amid a storm of red lightning. Reverse Flash recovered quickly, clambering to his feet and lunging at Barry, but he was no longer blurry and was moving at an almost normal speed. Barry dodged his blow easily enough, and Reverse Flash stumbled. His head whipped up and he stared at Cisco.

“What have you done, Cisco? What have you done?!” His voice was normal (although ragged and desperately angry) as well, and Cisco looked down at his still outstretched hand. What _had_ he done? But before either he or Reverse Flash could provide any sort of answer, Barry slammed into Reverse Flash from behind, knocking him out with a powerful blow to the head. It was over.

Or so it seemed at first. Barry disappeared in a flash of lightning, returning the prone form of the Reverse Flash to his cell, where he could be safely imprisoned until they figured out what to do with him. Joe walked over to Cisco, and put a hand on his shoulder.

“You gonna tell me what you did just then?” Cisco was about to respond when he saw something terrifying: the portal, reforming. It was the Singularity. They hadn’t managed to stop it. Now what were they going to do?

Barry flashed alongside them, also looking on in mute horror. Then he snapped into action.

“We have to get back to the Cortex and figure out how to stop that thing!” But he was briefly distracted by an unexpected fourth person in the Pipeline. “Eddie? What are you doing down here?”

“I...”

“Never mind. We have a Singularity to stop. Come on!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From this point onwards, everything pretty much plays out as it did in canon. Barry can't stop the Singularity, and Ronnie dies when he and Martin unfuse in the event horizon. The one major difference is that Eddie survives, and thus so does Eobard, and that's where things get interesting...


	2. Family Ties (Eddie)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a sulking supervillain looked in a cell in the Pipeline, and he's Eddie's direct descendant. Now that the tables are turned and Eobard is the one in captivity, Eddie sees a chance to get some more answers from his recalcitrant relative.

In the chaos and grief that followed the collapse of the Singularity, Eddie found himself almost forgotten by the other members of Team Flash. He didn’t begrudge them that, though. Caitlin, Cisco and Professor Stein were mourning Ronnie. Joe and Iris had closed ranks around Barry, a family supporting one of their own through grief and trauma. Eddie was part of that family, but also an outsider and he didn’t resent that. They’d let him back in when they needed him. In the meantime however, he had family of his own to think about. And wasn’t that a strange thought?

Despite his experiences as Wells’- Thawne’s- captive, he still hadn’t quite come to terms with the concept of the man being his descendant from the future. Eddie had always been an uncomplicated sort of guy. Destiny, fate, predestination, call it what you will, had never been something he’d factored into his world view. But now he had come face to face with living proof that his future took a certain path, and that that future involved children. Children with a woman other than Iris West.

And so he found himself back in the Pipeline, faced with an interesting reversal of circumstances. The last time he and Eobard Thawne had found themselves down here alone, Eddie had been the captive and Eobard the jailer. Now Eobard was the one in the cell, and Eddie would be lying if he said he didn’t appreciate the irony. As the door slid upwards, he found himself taking a deep breath. This was going to be interesting conversation...

Eddie was briefly caught off guard when the cell seemed empty at first glance, but then he realised that Eobard was sitting on the floor, leaning on the side wall. He’d removed the jacket portion of his suit, revealing a (unsurprisingly) black t-shirt. His face was hidden in his hands, and his elbows rested on his bent knees. His posture was surprisingly vulnerable, and looked odd on a man who Eddie had always found to be very self-assured.

After a few second without any sort of acknowledgement from Eobard, Eddie cleared his throat and gently shook the bag of takeout that he’d brought with him.

“I brought you something to eat. I didn’t know your exact burger order, though, sorry.” He opened the food hatch, placed the bag inside, and then pressed the button that would open the interior hatch. Eobard still didn’t move or acknowledge the food in any way. To be honest, Eddie hadn’t expected much of a response. The man’s fifteen-year-long plan had just come crashing down around his ears. It wasn’t really surprising that he was sulking about it. Still, Eddie was curious about a few things, so decided to try his luck.

“So, I’ve been thinking. You told Barry that you were born 150 years from now. Does that make you my three-, four-, or five-times-great grandson? And how old are you, anyway? Caitlin told me that Dr Wells was 51 this year, but you stole his identity. (Still don’t know how that works, by the way.) I doubt you were the exact same age as him when you did... whatever it was that you did. Also, what did you originally look like? Is there a family resemblance between us?”

Eobard finally moved, taking his hands away from his face and looking up at Eddie. He was a mess- his face was pale and blotchy, and his hair was all over the place. But the look in his eyes was sharp, despite the redness and puffiness.

“Do you ever stop asking questions?” he asked, his voice hoarse and irritated. Eddie snorted.

“I’m a detective. It’s my job.”

“Well go and do your job somewhere else. I’m not in the mood for inane conversation.”

“You’re the criminal in the cell. I don’t really care about your mood. Besides, I thought you’d appreciate a distraction from your moping.” Eobard glared at him.

“I’m not ‘ _ moping _ ’.” Eddie resisted the urge to snigger. That was a very petulant tone of voice that Eobard had just used. He just gave the man a ‘ _ really? _ ’look instead, and Eobard made a noise that was half snarl and half sigh. “And no, I don’t appreciate the distraction. I’d like to be left alone with my thoughts,  _ please _ .”

“You really think I care about what you want after you kidnapped me and kept me tied to a chair for two days?”

“That was for your own protection as well as mine,” Eobard shot back, archly.

“Actually, it almost got both of us killed.” Eobard looked up at Eddie, a sudden look of intense curiosity on his face. In a slow, deliberate movement, he got to his feet, and looked Eddie right in the face. Eddie almost took a step backwards under the intensity of his scrutiny.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I had a plan to defeat you. It was a pretty desperate last resort, but I wasn’t going to let you hurt the people I care about.” Eobard tilted his head, and frowned slightly.

“You were going to take your own life, in the hope that the paradox that action caused would take me with you.” Eddie nodded. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised that Eobard had worked it out for himself so quickly. He was a self-professed genius, after all. “I must admit, that wasn’t an eventuality I had taken into account.”

“So I outsmarted you?” Eobard actually laughed, chuckled, even.

“I wouldn’t say that. I did, however, underestimate you. Congratulations, Eddie. You’re not quite as hopeless as I’d thought.”

“ _ Thanks _ ,” said Eddie, with a hefty dose of sarcasm. “That means a lot, coming from my however-many-times great grandson.”

“ _ Four _ -times great grandson. And to answer one of your other previous questions, there is indeed a family resemblance between us. Or rather, there was. Surprising, considering the number of generations between us, but there none-the-less.”

“So how did you steal Harrison Wells’ face?”

“A piece of technology I brought with me from my own time. I shan’t try to explain it to you, because it would be beyond your understanding.” Eddie rolled his eyes.

“Are you always this patronising? You don’t know everything. Cisco’s powers took you by surprise.” Eobard raised his eyebrows and made a conceding sort of expression.

“They did. I hadn’t realised the true extent of his abilities until it was too late. I knew about the perception component, but that blast of vibrational energy was a surprise, as I suspect it was to him as well.” Eobard frowned and said, almost to himself, “I almost wish your plan had succeeded. Death by temporal paradox would seem almost preferable to being left powerless by an equally unforeseen action.”

“You’ve lost your powers?” Eddie, asked, surprised. He’d seen the rush of lightning and realised that something had happened to the Reverse Flash’s powers, but he hadn’t thought that they might be gone permanently. A small irritated expression flickered across Eobard’s face, as if he hadn’t really intended to reveal that particular point of information, but he didn’t try and deny it.

"So it would seem. This specific cell...” He gestured at his immediate surroundings. “... is rather unnecessary. Any Pipeline cell would be sufficient to contain me in my present state.” Eddie snorted.     

“I hope you don’t expect me to take you at your word.”

“Hardly. However, Dr Snow should be perfectly capable of confirming my assertions.” Eddie’s face fell at the mention of Caitlin.

“She’s... not going to be coming down here any time soon.” Eobard frowned.

“Caitlin was perfectly willing to talk to me the last time I was in this cell.”

“Well, last time you were in this cell, Ronnie was still alive.” Eobard took half a step backwards, shock and surprise evident on his face. Eddie suddenly realised that this might be one of the first times he’d seen Eobard obviously caught off guard (barring Barry’s sudden reappearance from the portal, that was).

“Ronnie is dead? How?”

“I don’t understand exactly what happened, but he and Professor Stein did their Firestorm thing in order to stop the Singularity that was caused by your time portal. They unfused or something in the eye of it, and the thing collapsed. Barry managed to save Professor Stein, but Ronnie was gone.” Eobard sighed and leaned back against the rear wall of the cell.

“I... didn’t want that to happen. Caitlin has lost enough because of my actions.”

“Well, maybe you should have thought of that before you caused a giant black hole that almost swallowed the city. Also, weren’t you threatening to kill her along with the rest of us just yesterday?”

“Death is simply an end. Living with loss is a different matter altogether.”

“That’s a strange set of morals you’re working off of there.”

“Perhaps.” Eobard sighed again. “Now, I would appreciate if you would leave me to my thoughts. I’ve just learned that a friend of mine has died, and I would like to be alone.” Eddie thought to argue the point, but then decided against it. Eobard might have a strange definition of friendship, but he respected the man’s right to grieve the loss of Ronnie. He might be a supervillain, but Eobard was human, too. (Well, metahuman, but Eddie wasn’t going to quibble over details like that.)

“Fine. You should eat that burger before it gets cold,” Eddie said, gesturing to the food hatch. “Making sure you get regular meals isn’t exactly on anyone’s list of priorities right now.” Eobard dipped his head in acknowledgement and Eddie, unsure of what else to say (did one say goodbye before leaving a supervillain to continue rotting in captivity?), simply walked out of the intake and pressed his hand against the monitor that closed the door. He glanced briefly back at the door that was rapidly concealing his formerly-superpowered distant descendant, and shook his head. Why was this his life now?


	3. Scientist to Scientist (Martin)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin wants answers. Eobard has them. But does Martin really want to go and talk to the supervillain in the cell? Because there's no guarantee he'll like what he hears...

A few days after the Singularity, Martin Stein found himself inexorably drawn back to STAR Labs. Or, more accurately, to the man currently languishing in a cell in the accelerator pipeline. Eobard Thawne had some answers that Martin sorely wanted, and Martin had always been one to let his curiosity override his better judgement.

The STAR Labs facility was empty as Martin made his way down to the Pipeline. Unsurprisingly, he thought. Cisco had taken Caitlin back to his apartment and had barely left her side, and the Wests (Barry included, of course) had thrown themselves into helping the city recover from the effects of the Singularity. Young Mr Thawne had done the same, but he had also been the only one who had been willing to ensure that their prisoner was provided with food on a regular basis. He had been impressed by Edward, Martin had to admit. The young man had risen to the occasion admirably, providing a buffer between the man they had known as Harrison Wells and the people that he had hurt the most.

So Martin was unsurprised when the door to the Pipeline opened and Eobard Thawne was standing there in his customary black clothes rather than his supersuit. Edward had no doubt provided him with the change of clothing at some point over the past few days.

“Professor Stein,” Eobard said, nodding a brief greeting.

“Dr Wells. Or, I suppose I should say, Thawne. I’m curious: are you also Dr Thawne? I would expect someone of your obvious intelligence to have gained that title on your own merit as well.”

“I haven’t held a teaching position for quite some time, but I am in fact a professor,” said Eobard, a slight note of pride in his voice.

“Ah, Professor Thawne. It appears we have yet another thing in common, as much as it pains me to admit it.” Eobard chuckled, but Martin was in no particular mood for joking. “It is your scientific knowledge that brings me here. I have some questions that I need answers to, and you are the only other physicist who knows everything that transpired.”

“You want to know about the Singularity.”

“Yes. More specifically, what might be its long term effects on the local space-time continuum, and...” Martin trailed off. Now face-to-face with the man who held the answers he sought, he wasn’t sure if he did indeed want to hear them.

“You want to know if you could have done anything differently, and whether it would have led to Ronnie’s survival.” It wasn’t a question. Martin pressed his lips together, closed his eyes briefly, and nodded.

“Yes.”

“You couldn’t have,” Eobard answered, surprisingly quickly. “If Barry was unable to produce enough energy to counteract the Singularity, Firestorm unfusing in appropriate proximity to the event horizon was the only alternative. The odds of either of you surviving that were very low. You’re lucky to be alive.”

“I wouldn’t quite use the word ‘lucky’...” Martin said quietly.

“Perhaps not,” said Eobard, his voice also low and a small, almost sad frown on his face. “But it should reassure you to know that there was nothing else you could have done.” Martin looked at him, surprised by the attempt at comfort. Had Ronald’s death really affected Eobard that much?

“I... Thank you.” Eobard dipped his head in acknowledgement, and then asked something that once again surprised Martin.

“How’s Caitlin doing?” His voice was soft, and laced with genuine concern, and Martin was forced to confront the realisation that he really did seem to care. Until this conversation, Martin had been assuming that Eobard’s affection for his former team had died along with his plans, but here was evidence that he had been wrong about that. He sighed, sadly.

“As well as can be expected, considering the circumstances. Cisco has been staying with her, but to lose someone for the second time, and in such a similar way? I fear she may never truly recover.”

“Caitlin is strong. It’ll take time, but she will heal.” Martin watched as Eobard nodded slightly to emphasise his words.

“You have a lot of faith in her. I must admit, your obvious affection for someone who was instrumental in foiling your plans surprises me.”

“Oh? Caitlin has been my colleague for almost three years. I would consider that more than enough time to develop an ‘affection’.”

“Yes, but not to put too fine a point on it, you are a supervillain. Not a category of person particularly known for caring about their subordinates.”

“Ha!” Eobard let out a short laugh. “Why Professor, I do believe you’re typecasting me.”

“You deny the fact that you’re the villain of this particular tale?”

“Of course not. It is, however, quite the oversimplification. Would Barry have become the Flash and saved so many lives were it not for my actions?”

“If I understand the multiple timelines at play correctly, the simple answer to that question is ‘yes’. It was your murder of Nora Allen that required you to interfere in Barry’s life once again. The only reason you were required to then engineer the creation of the Flash was to correct the mistake that had left you stranded in the past.” Had Martin imagined it, or had that been a flicker of anger that crossed Eobard’s face at the mention of his long-ago miscalculation?

“And since then I’ve only done what I had do. You could argue that the lives I saved- including your own, Professor- more than make up for the ones I took.”

“On a basis of pure mathematics, yes. But can you really look me in the eye and tell me that you have any right to consider yourself a hero? Because a true hero would regret even the necessary taking of lives. Do you regret it?” Eobard held Martin’s gaze for a few seconds, his face blank of all expression, and then he looked away, continuing the motion until he was standing facing the side wall of the cell. His jaw twitched with tension, and he seemed to have no response.

Martin felt a degree of triumph that his verbal blows had hit home. He rarely took pleasure in hurting others, but returning even the smallest fraction of the damage that Eobard had done to the people in his life? That was a more than worthy goal in Martin’s estimate.

Because Martin had felt the pain of Eobard’s betrayal. Not his own pain, because he had only vaguely known the man in his guise as Harrison Wells, but Ronald’s. When Firestorm had fought the Reverse Flash, their nuclear fire had been fuelled by anger and a desire for revenge, to hurt the man who had hurt them and more importantly the people that mattered to them. Caitlin. Cisco. Neither of them had deserved what Eobard had done to them. If Martin could in any way even the scales, he would gladly do so.

After a few long moments, Eobard turned back to face Martin again. His expression was neutral, but his gaze was cold.

“You had other questions about the Singularity. I suggest you ask them, before my patience for this conversation runs out.”

“I did, yes. Chiefly, what might the long term effects be? The main event was neutralised, but the energies involved… I find it hard to believe that our local space-time suffered no lasting consequences.”

“That was always a possibility,” Eobard said evenly. “Although without specific data about the Singularity and the explosion that closed it, accurate predictions of the long term effects are almost impossible.”

“Well, I forgot to take my spectrograph with me during the last ditch attempts to save the planet,” Martin shot back, irritated by Eobard’s dispassionate and unhelpful commentary. “And I find myself lacking in the ability or indeed inclination to recreate the events for study purposes.”

“You may not have to,” said Eobard, and Martin frowned at him. “Are you still in possession of the helmet that fell through the portal prior to my-” he paused slightly, and another flicker of anger sparked across his face- “aborted departure?”

“Ah yes, the helmet.” Martin had almost forgotten about it in the chaos, but the mysterious item of headgear was now sitting in the Cortex, a mystery that none of them had the energy to solve. However, it seemed it was more important than Martin had first thought. “You recognised it, I believe? To whom does it belong?” A humourless smile, more a baring of teeth than anything else, crossed Eobard’s otherwise expressionless face.

“That would be telling. Suffice it to say that it hails from elsewhere, and determining exactly where will give you a starting point when investigating the Singularity’s effects.”

“Elsewhere? In time or in space?”

“That’s for you to determine. But the most likely side effect of the Singularity is the opening of smaller breaches to another time or place. That helmet came from one such place, and will be possessed of an energy signature unique to that location. Scanning for that signature will then tell you whether or not additional breaches were opened, and that is when you will find your answers.” Martin was slightly taken aback. It was a mark of how hard he had been hit emotionally by recent events that he hadn’t seen such a simple solution for himself.

“Ah. Thank you. You’ve been most helpful,” he said, somewhat absently as his brain was already starting to run through the various tests he would have to perform to determine the helmet’s space and time of origin.

“Well, if my role going forward is to be nothing more than a glorified encyclopaedia, I may as well fill that role to the best of my ability,” Eobard said, the contempt in his voice betraying how little he thought of his newfound situation. Martin was jarred from his thoughts, and looked the man directly in the face. For perhaps the first time he truly saw the depth of the anger that lurked beneath Eobard’s calm exterior, and it was all he could do not to shudder. He had _liked_ Harrison Wells, thought highly of the man both as a scientist and as a person. But now he saw past Harrison to Eobard, and he was deeply grateful for the cell door that separated them. Both for his own safety, and for what he might be tempted to do to the man who had caused so much pain to the people he cared about.

“It’s more than you deserve,” he said, quietly, darkly, and he turned on his heel and marched straight out of the intake without so much as a backwards glance.


	4. Eobard

Over. It was all over. Fifteen years of careful planning and even more careful execution, only to have everything collapse around him in less than an instant. This was all Barry’s fault. _Barry Allen_ , who, it turned out, was the same in any timeline regardless of what Eobard might have begun to believe. Self-righteous, sanctimonious _Barry Allen_ , always convinced that _he_ was the _hero_ , that he was in the _right_ , and damn the consequences for anyone else.

Eobard paced back and forth in the tiny cell, a mess of anger and grief and rage, all pent up and with nowhere to go. It was excruciating. He wanted to run, to feel the lightning crackling through his veins and burning his anger away until he could _think_ again but instead he was _stuck_. Stuck here, confined to this cell with its four walls and lack of options. He snarled, slammed his hand into one of the walls, kicked out at the light in the bottom corner. The lights were _not_ helping. They were too bright and it was making his head hurt and there was nowhere he could sit or stand where one of them wasn’t shining directly into his face. He definitely needed to ask Cisco to do something about the lights in the cells.

Cisco. Now there was someone else that Eobard should be angry at, because he was also partly responsible for his current situation. But his feelings towards Cisco were... complicated. The young man may have discovered his abilities at a most inconvenient time, but part of Eobard couldn’t help but be proud of him. He’d always known that Cisco was capable of great things, and now he had one more achievement to add to his ever-growing list: robbing Eobard of his speed.

For that was what had happened. Somehow, the vibrational energy that Cisco had blasted him with had been at exactly the right frequency to disrupt the Speed Force within Eobard’s body, driving it out of his system in a storm of red lightning and leaving him defenceless against Barry’s incapacitating blow. Eobard was too angry right now to work out exactly how Cisco had instinctively found that frequency, but it was a question he sorely wanted the answer to.

Glaring at the hand he had pressed up against the wall of the cell, he willed it to vibrate, to phase, to give him a weapon to destroy those _damn lights_ but nothing. With an exclamation of disgust, he turned away from the wall and practically slammed his back into it, pointedly ignoring the twinges in his ribs. The loss of his healing factor along with his powers was deeply inconvenient and highly irritating. Folding his arms across his chest, he leaned against the wall and scowled.

The worst thing about his current situation was that he had _no idea_ what to do next. He’d always had a plan, a goal, something to work towards, and now he had nothing. Nothing except a powerful desire to lash out at the person who had put him in this position, to _hurt_ Barry, to make him feel the same sense of loss that Eobard himself was feeling, to take away everything that Barry had worked for and achieved. It wasn’t the first time he’d felt this same desire. All the feelings that were now erupting to the surface had been forged so many years ago now, the very first time that _the Flash_ had ruined his plans. When he had proved himself to be anything but the hero that Eobard had always seen him as.

Because Eobard hadn’t always hated the Flash, oh no. And that was almost the worst of it. Once upon a time, a young boy by the name of Eobard Thawne had needed a hero, someone to look up to, to idolise, and he had found the Flash. A man capable of physically running circles around his enemies the way Eobard had always been able to do mentally. A man who had taken his differences and used them to become someone that people looked up to, not down on. A man who was exactly the role model that a young, socially isolated genius who was ignored by his family and ridiculed by his peers had sorely needed.

So Eobard had studied the Speed Force, become the foremost expert on the mysterious energy source, and eventually bent it to his will. But with his newfound powers had come an unavoidable truth, an inescapable destiny: the history books said that Eobard Thawne became the Flash’s greatest enemy. He was _never_ going to become the Flash.

Eobard had never dealt well with being told he would fail at something. He’d always had such confidence in his ability to think his way out of any predicament that failure seemed like simply a stepping stone. Even if he failed, eventually he’d work out a way to succeed. But here was incontrovertible proof that he would never be a hero. That no matter what he tried, no matter how many solutions he threw at the problem, he was never going to be the Flash. Because the Flash himself would always stand in his way.

A close study of the timeline revealed that Eobard’s destiny spun out from a single event: a fight between two Flashes. A fight that he lost. And history is written by the victor. Somehow, the Flash had convinced himself that Eobard was his enemy, and that was what ruined all possible chance Eobard had of being a hero. Because if you were the enemy of a hero, that made you a villain by default. No ifs or buts or room for negotiation or interpretation. If a superhero was fighting you, that made you a villain.

It was a horrible betrayal. The Flash, the man who Eobard had looked up to for practically all his life, was the one singlehandedly responsible for preventing Eobard from achieving his life’s goal. And that simply wouldn’t stand. But how to remove the one obstacle that stood in his way? How did one destroy a hero?

The answer was simple. And so the Reverse Flash was born. An enemy that would destroy the Flash, wipe him from the timeline so that Eobard would be free to become whatever he wanted to. First, he had to become everything that the timeline said he would. But he’d do it better. He wouldn’t simply fight the Flash; he’d do everything in his power to counteract everything the Flash had ever achieved or accomplished. For every life he saved, Eobard would take one. For every day he emerged victorious, Eobard would engineer an even worse defeat. Little by little, he’d wipe the Flash’s legacy from the time stream. And then he would finally be free.

Of course, the ultimate solution, the checkmate that would guarantee Eobard’s final victory, was to wipe _the Flash himself_ from the time stream. And so that became his end goal. First he would find out which time period the Flash originated from, and then he would learn his name. And then he would wipe that name from the history books for good.

But it hadn’t been that simple, had it? He’d miscalculated, underestimated the truly fickle nature of the Speed Force, and he’d paid the price. _Fifteen years_ he’d lost to that mistake. The very thought of it made his blood boil. _Fifteen years_ spent in this barbaric, backwater time period, overseeing advances in physics that he’d learned about in grade school all in the name of recreating his greatest enemy to fix his own greatest mistake. He supposed he might consider it ironic if it didn’t make him so deeply, overwhelmingly angry at both himself and the universe for placing him in that situation.

And now he was trapped once again. His way home- that he had worked so hard and sacrificed so much for- destroyed in an instant at the whim of a _child_. And that was the worst of it. Eobard could barely even equate the Barry of this timeline with the man, the _Flash_ that he had fought so many times. Leaving aside the confusing mess of emotions he felt for the young man, he bore so little resemblance to the superhero Eobard had idolised and then grown to hate. Eobard’s Flash had been decisive, judgemental, so convinced that he was in the right that he never even entertained the possibility of an alternate viewpoint... Well, that part was the same. Barry Allen’s ironclad stubborn belief that he was moral and right seemed to be a constant across the multiverse.

But this Barry, Eobard’s Barry, the Barry he found himself caring about despite himself, was so young, so reliant on the parental figures in his life to make his decisions for him. And that had been both a help and a hindrance. On the one hand, Barry had listened to him, become reliant on his approval and praise. On the other, well... One didn’t handhold a young person through life-altering events without becoming somewhat invested in that young person’s progress. Eobard’s time as a professor had taught him that, and his time mentoring the young Flash had only confirmed it.

And that was what made things so difficult. Eobard wanted to _hurt_ Barry, to make him feel even the smallest fraction of the pain and anger he himself was experiencing. But at the same time there was a small part of him that didn’t want to see Barry hurt. That had somehow taken the sentiment “I need you alive and healthy for _my_ sake” and warped it until it became “I want you alive and healthy for _your_ sake”. Eobard snarled again, and lunged forward, away from the wall, pacing up and down the tiny space with his hands clenched at his side. The last thing he had needed was to add another level of conflicting emotions to his complicated relationship with the Flash.

In a sense, he supposed he was grateful that his only visitors thus far had been Eddie and Martin Stein. Between them, they provided food, a certain degree of mental stimulation, and nothing more. Other than when they were imparting news about Ronnie and Caitlin, their visits required little to no emotional engagement on the interpersonal level, stirred up very few conflicting emotions, and that was precisely what Eobard needed in his present situation.

But Barry would visit him eventually, and it would be _nice_ , Eobard thought viciously to himself, if he could have some manner of _coherent thoughts_ by that point. His anger had gotten the better of him in the aftermath of Barry’s sudden and unexpected return, and he’d declared his intentions to kill not just Barry but everyone that mattered to him. He’d _wanted_ to kill them all, too. But now, removed both emotionally and temporally from the white hot anger of those few desperate moments, things were much more complicated. And he _hated_ it.

Part of Eobard was tempted to lay the blame for his current conflicted state squarely at the feet of Harrison Wells and his damned bleeding heart. But the part of him that was ruthlessly rational wouldn’t let him get away with that. Harrison’s face and identity had come with memories attached, that was empirical fact. But that was all they were. Memories. And being possessed of another man’s memories may have informed some of his decisions over the past fifteen years, but ultimately each and every choice had been his own. Each and every feeling he had developed towards people that Harrison had never met was his own. And that included the feelings he was trying to distance himself from.

Eobard kicked out at one of the lights again. His capacity for logical thought even in the face of extreme emotion had almost always been a benefit to him in the past. Now it was simply giving him another reason to want to hit things.

But that wouldn’t solve anything, except for perhaps making him feel a little better. No, the only way out of his current predicament was to come up with some manner of plan, some sort of goal to work towards. But he couldn’t formulate such a goal until he understood the full extent of his situation. For all he knew, the good Detective West, ever the pragmatist, might be doing his best to convince the other members of his team that Eobard was too dangerous to be kept alive. Barry had certainly seemed quite keen on the idea of Eobard’s demise even before he had watched his mother die in person. Or perhaps it had already been determined that he was far more useful as a source of information and expertise, and he was facing a long and dismal future of being nothing more than an encyclopaedia that talked back. Neither fate held much appeal, that much was certain.

And so, with a degree of effort only slightly lessened by long years of practice, Eobard pushed down hard on his anger, shoved his conflicting feelings to the side where they could be dealt with at a later date, and resolved to wait and observe. He would come up with contingency plans, of course, but his end goal could only be determined once he had more information to work with. It was a familiar refrain. Information was power, and a power that Eobard knew how to use to his advantage almost as well as he knew the Speed Force. And, he thought, with a twinge of anger that he briefly indulged before pushing it down again, it was the only power currently available to him.

So let them come. Whether it was Eddie’s inane babble or Martin’s rambling attempts to grasp science that was far beyond him, with every visit Eobard learned more of the current status quo. He’d suffer the indignity of being gawked at in his cell, of having his every move watched and weighed and worried about, because he knew that eventually someone would slip up, reveal more than they meant to.

And then, armed with that new information, he could finally move forward.


	5. The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Truth (Joe)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joe has no patience for obnoxious supervillains. So the prospect of getting Thawne to cooperate with providing a blood sample is not one that appeals in the slightest.
> 
> (Content warning for discussion of blood samples and the brief use of a needle for that purpose.)

Joe West was proud of the reputation he had developed over the years. Colleagues and family alike considered him to be a steady presence, a mediating influence, someone who could always be relied on to approach a crisis with a cool head and a steady trigger finger. And normally he was fine with that. But sometimes...

Sometimes he’d give all that up in a heartbeat for the chance to really cut loose, to let his anger and irritation get the better of him. Today was one of those times.

It had all started when Eddie had pulled him aside in the precinct, the day after all the madness with the Singularity, and informed him that the Reverse Flash had apparently lost his powers. Joe had been instantly sceptical. Nothing Thawne said could ever be taken at face value, and a claim like that? Well, the likelihood that it was part of another scheme was so high that Joe was tempted to dismiss it out of hand.

And then Martin Stein, ever one to let his curiosity get the better of him ( _ scientists _ , Joe despaired, for what felt like the thousandth time) had reported the very same thing. Except this time the claim was backed up by an observation: Thawne’s injuries from his final fight with Barry were healing at a normal rate. So now Joe was officially intrigued.

However, given Thawne’s track record with faking injuries, he thought it best to get some proof. It had taken some gentle coaxing (which he’d felt terrible about, but unfortunately it was necessary), but eventually Joe had been able to get Caitlin to agree to analysing a blood sample. If Thawne was telling the truth, and his powers were genuinely gone, there were tests that could confirm that. The only problem now was obtaining the blood sample, which was proving to be... irritating.

A minute or so earlier, Joe had marched into the Intake, resolved to get what he had come for and leave before he was tempted to do anything rash.

“Caitlin needs a blood sample,” he had stated, sliding a plastic container (which held a syringe gun and several sample vials) into the food hatch and pressing the button that would cycle it through to the interior of the cell. Thawne, who had been sat on the floor with his hands behind his head, got to his feet with the slow, deliberate movements of a man resolved to take his sweet time to do anything, and smiled that irritating smile of his that made Joe want to punch him in the face.

“Well, if it isn’t Detective West. I must say, you’re the last person I expected to come and visit me down here.” Joe folded his arms and gave the man a hard stare.

“Blood sample. Now.” The problem, of course, was that the only person who could take the blood sample Caitlin needed to run her tests was Thawne himself. Since there was a distinct possibility that the man was lying through his teeth once again, Joe couldn’t risk opening the door to do it himself, and the tranquilising gas they had used on the other metas during the prisoner transfer gone wrong would have no effect on a speedster’s accelerated metabolism. So his success in this particular endeavour entirely depended on how cooperative Thawne happened to be feeling. Which, judging by the attitude, probably wasn’t much.

“Really, Joe, you’re not even going to say please? You might as well come in here and take it by brute force.”

“You really think I’m dumb enough to fall for that?” Eobard raised his eyebrows, amused, and Joe felt that urge to punch him again. A less cautious man would have risked the knock out gas just for the satisfaction of forcing Thawne to cooperate, but unfortunately Joe didn’t have that luxury.

“There’s nothing to fall for.” Thawne indicated the various partially healed abrasions on his face, and Joe also caught a glimpse of what looked like nasty bruises on his knuckles. “Surely this is proof enough that I’m telling the truth about my powers.” Joe realised that he was being drawn into a conversation whether he liked it or not, and resisted the urge to scowl.

“Nice try. I saw you nearly take down the Arrow without your powers, so your whole defenceless scientist act is pretty thoroughly shot full of holes. I’m not taking any chances.” Eobard chuckled.

“Mm. Perhaps that’s wise. Although,” he said, still making no motion towards the sample container, “you might be interested to know that it wasn’t always an act.” He quirked his eyebrows teasingly, and Joe once again cursed the fact that he couldn’t just brute force Thawne’s cooperation.

“Go on,” he said through partially gritted teeth. Thawne’s smug little smile widened a fraction. The bastard treated every interaction like a verbal sparring match, and it was clear that he considered that response a point to him.

“This isn’t the first time that I’ve been unable to heal injuries at my usual rate. In fact, the wheelchair that you no doubt consider simply part of my ‘defenceless scientist act’ was at one point necessary.” Despite his irritation, Joe knew important new information when he heard it. There was no doubt whatsoever that Thawne was drip feeding him no more and no less than what he  _ wanted _ Joe to know, but sometimes that was where people slipped up. He shifted his arms slightly, and paid careful attention.

“You saying you were actually injured when the particle accelerator blew up?”

“Not in the explosion itself, no. But you might have noticed that it did significant structural damage. I had... an unfortunate encounter with falling debris when assisting with the evacuation efforts. I couldn’t risk exposing myself to the prying eyes of hospital staff, so it was some time before I was able to use my powers to regain my ability to walk. Hence the need for the wheelchair.”

“Barry doesn’t have control like that over how fast he heals. How come you do?”

“Because, detective,” Thawne said with the air of someone finally reaching the point he intended to make, “my powers work quite differently to Barry’s. Unlike Barry, who generates Speed Force energy as he runs, I use it up. Without a suitable energy source like, say, the tachyon prototype, I will eventually simply... run out of speed.”

Joe’s mind raced as he processed this new information. He didn’t even pretend to understand how the Speed Force worked, but if he understood correctly Thawne had just revealed his greatest weakness. And that thought brought him up short. There was no way someone as calculating as Thawne would reveal something like that without an ulterior motive. And there was always the possibility that the man was simply lying once again. Which, to be perfectly honest, was the most likely answer.

“Say I believe you,” Joe said, scrutinising Thawne’s face for even the slightest hint of a reaction. “You wouldn’t reveal something like that if it didn’t benefit you in some way.” Eobard chuckled again.

“You’re right, I wouldn’t. But in this instance, the true nature of my powers becoming common knowledge benefits us both. Caitlin and Cisco will know exactly how to use that information to concoct a suitably rigorous method to determine whether I’m telling the truth about the absence of my powers. And once my honesty has been confirmed, well, then interesting options begin to present themselves.”

“If you think you’re ever getting out of that cell, you got another think coming.” Thawne gave him a look, as if he was disappointed in Joe for his response, and oh look there was that urge to punch him again.

“Oh, detective, now you’re just being petty. I knew you never really liked me, but are you really going to let your personal feelings get in the way? You know full well that you’re going to need me eventually.”

“The only thing I need from you right now is a blood sample.” Thawne held Joe’s hard gaze for a few seconds, and then sighed theatrically.

“As you wish.” He rolled up his right sleeve, and reached for the sample container. Pausing periodically, for what seemed like nothing more than an excuse to raise Joe’s blood pressure, he carefully extracted the syringe gun from the protective case, loaded an empty vial, and pressed the needle to his arm. Joe had never been particularly squeamish, but there was something a little unnerving about the detached and clinical way that Thawne went about taking the blood sample.

A little more than a minute later, and all three of the vials that had been in the case were full.

“That should be more than enough for Caitlin to run all the tests she needs to.” Thawne placed the syringe gun back in the plastic case and snapped it closed. “You’ll see I’m telling the truth. I have no reason to lie about this.” Joe rolled his eyes.

“Other than the fact that you’re pathological liar?” He was just about running out of what little patience he had left, and the last of it evaporated when Eobard laughed once again.

“Harsh. And you’d be surprised how little I’ve actually lied to you.”

“Are you forgetting all that crap you told me about Tess Morgan, or all the times you introduced yourself as Harrison Wells?”

“Ah,” said Eobard, raising a finger. Joe resisted the urge to glare pointedly at the sample case that he still held in his other hand. “I told you before that I retain all of Harrison’s memories, and what are we but the sum of our memories? To all intents and purposes, I  _ am _ Harrison Wells. So what I told you was true, from a certain point of view.” Right. That was it. Thawne was just messing with him now, and Joe wasn’t going to put up with it any more.

“Give me the box, Thawne.” It was an order, one with the weight of more than a quarter of a century of parenting authority and nearly that much experience as a cop behind it, and Thawne finally seemed to get the message. His taunting expression turned cool, and he gazed at Joe for a few seconds before placing the sample case into the hatch without breaking eye contact. The expression on his face very clearly said “I’ve had my fun and you no longer interest me”, which was a far cry from the “you win this round” that Joe had been hoping for. But he’d take what he got, especially since he was finally able to retrieve the blood samples that he had come looking for in the first place.

Picking up the case, Joe turned and walked out of the intake without so much as a backwards glance. He wondered if Thawne would call after him, try and get the last word, but no. Joe may have gotten what he came for, but Thawne had already gotten the last word without even saying anything. That whole exchange had been the verbal equivalent of a sparring match, and by forcing the conversation to end like that, Joe had conceded defeat. He found he didn’t much care, though. At the end of the day, Thawne was the one in the cell. And as long as he remained there, he was much less of a threat.

Except... that wasn’t right. In his entire fifteen years in the 21 st century, Eobard Thawne had accomplished far more through guile than he ever had through violence. And that was why, regardless of what Caitlin’s tests might show, it would be  _ incredibly _ dangerous for them to consider him powerless. Joe just hoped that he could convince the others of that.


	6. Ghost of a Friend (Tina)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tina McGee had always known that something about her friend Harrison had changed all those years ago when he survived the car crash that killed his wife Tess. But the fact that he had been replaced by a supervillain? That was the last thing she expected to learn when called to STAR Labs by Detective West.  
> But of course there was no way she was going to leave until she got a chance to talk face to face with the man that killed her two oldest friends...

Tina McGee was having what she could only describe as an _interesting_ week. After all, it’s not every day that a Singularity opens in the sky above your city. But what was ridiculous was that that had only been the start of it all.

Only a few days later, Detective Joe West had left her a very cryptic voicemail asking her to join him at STAR Labs the next day. When she’d phoned back and asked why Harrison Wells was not the one extending the invitation, Detective West had rapidly changed the subject, and let slip that the reason he wanted to meet had something to do with the Singularity. That part Tina had worked out for herself, of course. Anyone with eyes could see that the event had originated at the STAR Labs facility, and Tina also had a highly advanced lab of her own at her disposal to confirm that suspicion.

So, the next morning, she had arrived at STAR Labs in a state of wary curiosity, where she was greeted by Detective West, his partner Detective Thawne and a rather unexpected third person: noted physicist Professor Martin Stein. Tina had met Martin a few times at conferences and the like and had always followed his work with interest, so she was greatly intrigued by the fact that he’d somehow found his way to what remained of STAR Labs.

And then, well... If she hadn’t been right in the middle of some of the events herself, she would have dismissed the story they told her as nothing more than a retelling of a particularly over-the-top comic book. But learning the truth about the Reverse Flash and his machinations... She may have been brought into the loop because they needed her help as a scientist, but in many respects the questions that were finally being answered were much more personal. Because, after all, as Tina had reminded Detective West and Professor Stein when they had hesitated in allowing her to visit their prisoner, she was the only person there who had known the real Harrison Wells.

And so it was that Tina found herself standing in the intake for the accelerator ring, staring at a closed door and trying to work out how she felt about the man beyond it.

Because not only had Tina known Harrison Wells, he had been one of the dearest friends that she had ever had. When a bespectacled, floppy-haired kid who seemed far too young to be at grad school had showed up at her apartment to visit her roommate, Tess Morgan, Tina hadn’t thought much of it. But then she had discovered that she and Tess’s new friend were teaching assistants for the same professor and, more importantly, that he was simply a delightful person. And so the three of them had quickly become inseparable. More than ten years later, when Tess and Harrison finally remembered that getting married was a thing that people did, Tina had pulled double duty as both the maid of honour and the “best woman”.

Not even six months later, she had held Harrison up as he sobbed his way through Tess’s funeral.

But, Tina thought, with a swelling of emotions that she couldn’t quite put a name to yet, the man she had tried to support in the months after that despite his best attempts to push her away had not, in fact, been her friend Harrison. He’d been an imposter, a fraud. Harrison had died in that car crash, and Tina hadn’t even known it.

And the man she was about to talk to had murdered him. Not only that, but he’d taken Harrison’s life in more ways than one, stealing his face and identity and using them to pervert everything that Harrison had set out to accomplish. It was enough to make her blood boil, and that anger finally provided the impetus she needed to press the control that would open the access hatch that led to the interior of the Pipeline.

As the hatch moved upwards, Tina took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and schooled her expression into guarded neutrality. She wasn’t going to give the man in the cell the slightest hint of weakness that he could exploit.

“So,” she said when the cell finally came into full view, “What _really_ happened to my tachyon prototype?” The man who wasn’t Harrison Wells had his back to her, but he turned at the sound of her voice, a look of amused curiosity on his face.

“Christina. Well, now, this is a surprise.” Maybe it was the lack of his glasses, or something in his eyes, or just that she knew the truth now, but suddenly Tina had no idea how she could ever have mistaken this man for her old friend. It was jarring, looking at a face she knew but not recognising the person looking back.

“Harrison. Or, should I say, Eobard.” Eobard grinned, an almost predatory baring of teeth with no warmth to it at all, only a cold satisfaction.

“So you know who I am. I must say, it took you long enough. I would have expected better from a woman as observant as you, Christina.”

“I’m disappointed in myself,” Tina admitted, hiding the genuine emotion behind a conversationally neutral tone. “I may have figured out that young Mr Allen was the Flash, but the fact that my oldest friend had been replaced by a murderer from the future escaped me entirely.” Eobard’s smile broadened again, and he actually laughed.

“Barry hasn’t exactly been subtle with his identity, has he? It’s been all I can do to keep certain more... dangerous parties from exploiting that fact.”

“I assume that means you were behind the disappearance of Simon Stagg?”

“Oh, you are good.” Eobard clapped his hands together. “It’s a good job you know how to keep a secret or I might have been forced to deal with you as well.” Tina suppressed a shudder. What sort of a man could speak so casually about murdering someone, and directly to their face as well? It was especially jarring in that voice, which Tina had once heard quote Vulcan philosophy to explain why he wouldn’t even kill spiders.

“You still haven’t answered my question,” Tina said, for want of a change in subject as much as an answer. “You went to great lengths to acquire my tachyon prototype, and I’m curious to know what you did with it.” Eobard tilted his head to one side, a slight quirk of his eyebrows his only acknowledgement of the clumsy conversational segue.

“Do you want the short answer, or the one that requires an in-depth knowledge of the workings of the Speed Force?”

“Don’t patronise me,” Tina said, a slight unintentional heat in her voice. “I may not be from the future, but I’m every bit the scientist you are.” Eobard raised his eyebrows, and pulled a face that went directly against the ‘don’t patronise me’ request. Tina knew that she could be arrogant herself on occasion, but this man seemed to have turned smug superiority into an art form.

“Well then. If you must know, when they interact with speedster physiology, the energetic properties of tachyons increase cellular Speed Force absorption. I was able to use your tachyon prototype to essentially recharge my speed.”

“Fascinating,” said Tina, momentarily distracted from her annoyance by pondering the implications of this new information. “Would any superluminal particle do the job, or is it a property specific to tachyons that produces the recharging effect?” Eobard tapped the side of his nose.

“You’re the tachyon expert. Why don’t you figure it out?” Tina rolled her eyes. “Besides, don’t you want to know the other use your prototype was put to?”

“Go on...” Tina was intrigued, both by the answer and the fact that Eobard was actually volunteering information.

“I would imagine that the good Professor Stein asked for you to be brought into the loop due to his concerns about the Singularity? And I would also assume that he told you about his role in stopping it, and thus his powers as Firestorm and the quantum splicer that regulated them?” Tina nodded, putting two and two together.

“That quantum splicer is what became of my prototype?” Eobard inclined his head.

“Correct. So you can rest assured that your device was put to at least one good use after I, ah, appropriated it.” But that wasn’t the only thing that Tina got out of the news that her device had been used to stabilise Firestorm. There was a rather interesting conclusion one could draw from that, and she was curious about how Eobard would react to her bringing it up.

“It was indeed. I’m curious: what made you decide that Firestorm’s continued survival was more important than the benefits you gained from using the tachyon prototype for your own purposes?” Eobard gazed at her, the faint amusement on his face fading until his face was nearly expressionless. Now it was Tina’s turn to smile in satisfaction. She’d caught him off guard. The man standing in front of her may not be her old friend, but she’d paid enough attention to him over the years to be able to read him, and his face frequently went blank like that when he was processing an unexpected development.

“You could have simply let them die, but instead you surrendered a device that seems to me to have been rather fundamental to your plans. That doesn’t really jibe with the overly controlling man I thought I knew, and it certainly doesn’t fit the uncaring, manipulative one I had described to me by Detective West.”

“It doesn’t, does it,” said Eobard, calmly, emotionless. It wasn’t a question.

“You care about the people here, don’t you?” Tina said, watching carefully for any hint of a reaction. “I noticed it before, with Mr Allen. You’ve gotten attached.” Eobard folded his arms, and it was such an obviously defensive gesture that it was practically a confirmation.

“You should know by now that my relationship with Barry is anything but simple,” he commented, his face still guardedly neutral.

“And what about Mr Ramon? Or Dr Snow? Are they equally as complicated?” she asked.

“Your point?” That was the question, wasn’t it? Tina knew the point she was making, but she wasn’t actually quite sure why. It definitely went beyond curiosity. There was no logical reason that Eobard’s relationships with his team members should matter so much to her, but emotions rarely bowed to logic. Perhaps it was something to do with the fact that Caitlin Snow reminded her so strongly of herself at that age, or that she was reaching in an attempt to find something recognisable and human in the man that stood in front of her. Whatever it was, it mattered to her to try and get Eobard to understand.

“My point is that you’re not the only one who cares. It’s obvious that your team cares deeply about you.” Eobard laughed, sudden and involuntary, a note of bitter scepticism in his voice.

“Somehow I doubt that’s true anymore.”

“You would be surprised. I continued to care about you, or rather the man I thought you were, long after you pushed me away,” Tina admitted. It was true. Until she’d learned the truth earlier that day, she’d still harboured a certain degree of fondness towards ‘Harrison Wells’. If she was being perfectly honest, she still did. He might not be Harrison, but it wasn’t as if the man in front of her was a total stranger. “Admittedly, a few too many harsh words are quite different to betrayal and attempted murder, but I’d wager the emotions involved are rather similar.”

“Really? The situations seem quite different to me. What you experienced was a friend seemingly growing distant, pushing you away. Quite different to the revelation that someone has been lying to you about their identity and motives for the entire time you’ve known them.” Eobard’s tone was conversational, detached, but the intensity of his gaze betrayed him.

“You make a fair point,” Tina conceded. “But you’re also missing the point that I’m trying to make. I’m trying to tell you that, regardless of how you might be feeling right now, there are people who you have hurt and you have a chance to make amends with.”

“What makes you think I want to do that?” he asked, his tone suggesting that Tina was being ridiculous. But Tina had him exactly where she wanted him, and he’d set her up perfectly to deliver the final blow.

“Because you’ve spent fifteen years playing the role of a very good man. I refuse to believe that that had no effect on you.” Eobard blinked, but otherwise was entirely still. It was as if his brain had stalled, tripped up on the thoughts provoked by what Tina had just said. Harrison had done that, she thought with sad nostalgia. Except it was usually affection from the people he loved that had overwhelmed him with thoughts and emotions, not anything nearly as complicated as what must be going through Eobard’s head right now. Tina felt a certain degree of satisfaction. There was little she could do to avenge her friend, but the idea that his memory was causing emotional turmoil for the man who had murdered him? That meant something. Something small, but _something_ nonetheless. And if those same memories prompted Eobard to make amends with the people he had wronged? Tina could think of worse ways for Harrison to be remembered.

Of course, there was no way for her to know what the man with Harrison’s face was capable of. She knew nothing of who he had been before he stole her best friend’s life, and if he was even capable of the remorse that she hoped he was feeling. But she could hope. Harrison Wells, Christina McGee, and Tess Morgan had had their happy ending stolen from them by Eobard Thawne. But Cisco Ramon, Caitlin Snow, and Barry Allen... There was still a chance for them.

Somehow, Tina managed to extract a smile from her complicated mess of feelings, and she directed it at the supervillain who still stood motionless in the cell.

“Good day, Eobard. I hope you’ll think about what I’ve said.” And with that, Tina turned on her heel and left.

As she strode along the corridor, Tina took a deep breath and sighed. She hadn’t really known what to expect from her encounter with Eobard, but in the end, she’d finally found a measure of the closure she hadn’t quite realised she was looking for. She was deeply saddened by the discovery that her best friend had died fifteen years ago and she hadn’t even known it, of course. But she was also relieved that the broken, angry man he had apparently become hadn’t been him at all. Bittersweet was probably the word for that particular revelation.

But now... Now she could finally mourn Harrison along with Tess. She could finally put the ghosts of that friendship to rest. And somehow, that might be enough.


	7. Eobard

Eobard hadn’t intended to count the days that he had spent locked in the Pipeline. But the human brain is wired for pattern recognition and his was more so than most, so he found himself doing exactly that. He took note of each time the lights dimmed for the evening, each time Eddie appeared with some manner of foodstuff, and it provided him with some degree of structure. That was important. Eobard had always relied on structure when his life got unpredictable, as it was so prone to doing, and this was perhaps the most unpredictable things had ever been for him.

At least he could say one thing with reasonable certainty: the team intended to keep him alive. The involvement of Tina McGee as a scientific second opinion might have given him pause, instilled worries of outliving his usefulness, but it was also an admission that Martin Stein felt he was out of his depth. And Tina was a smart woman, but even she had her limits. No, Eobard could be reasonably confident that his knowledge of the Speed Force was more than enough to ensure his continued survival.

But beyond that? Nothing was certain. He sighed, and rubbed his face with his hands, wincing at the feel of a few days’ worth of stubble. He derived a moment or two of amusement from imagining what Eddie’s reaction would be if he requested a means of shaving. His amiable ancestor might be willing to provide him with food, but even he wasn’t gullible enough to trust Eobard with anything bladed or electronic. Thus far, he hadn’t even trusted him with cutlery, which Eobard would have considered ridiculous if he hadn’t already come up with three separate ways he could compromise the various monitoring devices in his cell with a simple plastic fork. Not that he would, given his intentions to play along for the time being, but still. It was the principle of the thing.

At least Eddie was an uncomplicated visitor. About the most inconvenience he caused was when he (no doubt deliberately) made a mistake with Eobard’s burger order. But having to pick pickles out of one’s food, while an annoyance, was a very minor one at best. And Eobard would take Eddie’s inane comments and petty attempts at mild revenge over complications like those that Tina’s visit had brought to the forefront of his mind any day.

The way she had managed to zero in on exactly the complicated emotions that were causing him the most trouble... It was jarring to realise that Tina could still read him after so many years. Even more so given that she had never truly known  _ him _ , only Harrison and Eobard’s imitation thereof. Was she right to believe that spending so long pretending to be Harrison had changed him? That was an uncomfortable line of thought, that was for certain, and one that he’d been grappling with on and off for a very long time.

Ever since that night by the roadside, Eobard had done his best to build a wall around Harrison’s memories, to preserve his sense of self by treating those memories as if he had simply read them in a biography. It was why he had pushed Tina away in the first place. When she was around, he felt emotions that were not his own, recalled memories of a friendship that was so very at odds with his own true past. He had told himself he was being pragmatic, cutting himself off from the one person who knew Harrison well enough to see through his ruse, but truth be told, that had barely factored into his decision.

It had been impossible to avoid reminders of Harrison’s life completely, of course. He still had to play his part convincingly. But memories were much easier to distance himself from than a living, breathing reminder of a life that wasn’t his. And if he felt guilty for breaking Tina’s heart, well that was simply an echo of Harrison. Wasn’t it?

Eobard rocked backwards and forwards on the balls of his feet, wishing there was enough space in his cell to properly pace, to let the movement regulate his thoughts and calm his emotions. Because Tina hadn’t just reminded him of Harrison’s life before Eobard had taken it over, oh no. If that had been all, he would have been able to deal with it, to push it down and aside like he had been doing for so many years.

No, Tina had managed to remind him of the very emotions that had been occupying his thoughts the most: his feelings towards Cisco, Caitlin and Barry.

He hadn’t expected to care for them as much as he did. That was the simple truth of it. This fifteen-year-long detour through the 21 st century had been meant to be simply that- a detour. Eobard had initiated relationships, formed connections, but there had always been the understanding that those connections would not last. That he couldn’t carry them back to his own time, and thus they were simply to be enjoyed in the moment. Not valued over the long term.

So he had told himself that the pain and betrayal on each of their faces, in each of their voices, didn’t matter. That it was simply the inevitable conclusion of their time together. Caitlin, Barry, Cisco- they were all strong. Once he had gone they would eventually heal, move on. He had set their lives on better paths, and those paths would continue long after he returned to his own time. But he hadn’t returned to his own time, had he?

That was what was making this difficult. Eobard had prepared, both practically and emotionally, for leaving this time far behind him. But now he was stuck here, marooned once again, and left to wallow in feelings he had expected to be able to compartmentalise just like those from Harrison’s life before. It was... an unpleasant situation to say the least.

Eobard clenched his hands into fists at his sides, continuing to rock back and forth on his feet. He’d made the decision not to let himself get angry again, to clamp down on his rage and observe as passively as he could, but oh if that wasn’t difficult... He knew himself well enough to know that if he got properly angry again, he would lash out. Whether through words or deeds, he’d attempt to hurt someone, and that would simply make things worse. He counted himself lucky that Barry hadn’t deigned to visit him in the first few days of his captivity. The lack of his powers meant that Eobard was now substantially more breakable than the plexiglas barrier that separated him from the rest of the world, but in his anger he might have been tempted to put that to the test. Or he would have said something that would no doubt have made it much harder to later convince his captors that he intended to cooperate.

No, it was much more beneficial for him to stay if not calm, then at least not angry. There were enough strong emotions affecting his fate without throwing his own into the mix as well. He might have minimal influence over how the others felt, but at least his own feelings were something that he could control. That he could take a step back from, could temporarily push aside in favour of dispassionate logic. But his anger… That had always been the hardest to distance himself from.

In a sense, it was fortunate that Harrison had been a relatively mild mannered man. He had a temper, yes, but it was like comparing a campfire to the furnace of a steam train. Eobard’s anger pushed him forward, drove his actions and fuelled his decisions. Harrison’s had flared up only when it was needed, and burned with a fraction of the ferocity. Playing the role of the calmer man had been difficult, but it had tamed Eobard’s temper to a certain extent, taught him how to manage it. To bank the fire, if he were to belabour the metaphor. 

But how to better manage his anger wasn’t the only thing he had learned from being Harrison, and whenever he used that skill... Well, he couldn’t help but be reminded of a much less comfortable topic to think about, which didn’t help matters in the slightest. Eobard was loathe to admit it, because that meant acknowledging his own shortcomings, but he had been far more successful at making and keeping friendships in the 21 st century than he ever had in his own. He had been respected by his colleagues, and reasonably well liked by his students, yes, but the sort of easy socialisation that came so naturally to other people had escaped him. His analytical nature and fondness for information over people made him solitary by nature, an observer rather than a participant.

When he was eight years old, he had hacked his way into the family datafiles and found an autism diagnosis in his own that his parents had conveniently forgotten to tell him about. Suddenly, everything about how his mind seemed to work differently from his classmates made sense. But the only response from his parents when he confronted them about keeping such important information from him was a sudden increase in the number of social skills classes he was forced to attend.

He had hated those classes. Yes, they were the reason he had become as astute an observer of human behaviour as he was of other data sets, but that hadn’t been the intention. Learning to read people had been his own solution, the only way he could think of to make the classes stop. He had wanted to learn how to work with his natural responses, not suppress them so as to appear “normal”. And the more time he spent with his tutors, the clearer it became that he was better off doing that on his own. So he’d observed, and eventually imitated, and his parents had been delighted. He had finally learned how to be civil with his peers and tolerate his brother, and that was what mattered, was it not? Never mind the fact that he was simply play-acting to make them leave him alone.

Distracted by his memories, without quite realising he was doing it, Eobard let his hands unclench and stopped rocking on his feet. He folded his hands behind his back, a position that to an outsider would have looked natural and comfortable but to Eobard felt slightly constricting. It hid his hands from view, though, and made it harder for him to fidget with them. Old habits, even ones adopted thanks to persuasion rather than choice, died hard.

So, in light of his past, it had been more than a little uncomfortable when he realised that one of the effects that Harrison’s memories had on his own personality was a greater ease with social situations. Not that great an ease, as it turned out that Harrison had his own autism diagnosis to contend with, but it was still noticeable. In and of itself, a more natural understanding of social situations was a very helpful thing. But the feelings of “you are not good enough as you are and must change to be accepted” that his parents had planted all those years ago? The last thing they had needed was anything approaching supporting evidence.

But Eobard had railed against his parents’ treatment of ‘different’ as ‘lesser’ for so long that he had eventually found a way to reconcile the traits he had gained from Harrison: an additional 35 years of life experience had simply given him more data to work with. And learning from, and adapting to, new data was something Eobard was far more comfortable with than the possibility that his core self had been altered when he had assumed Harrison’s identity.

So he’d taken that new data and used it and slowly, ever so slowly, he had built a life in the 21 st century. It wasn’t a life for himself, of course. His life was still 150 years in the future. But it was  _ a _ life. And not such a bad life, objectively speaking. He had a really very nice house. His job, while not as intellectually satisfying as his research in his own time, was interesting and occasionally challenging. He was well regarded by the scientific community, and by peers and employees alike. He had friends.

Or did he? Whenever he thought of the friends he had made in the 21 st century he always came back to the same thought: the man that Caitlin, Cisco, Barry thought of as their friend was Harrison Wells. Not Eobard Thawne. And that shouldn’t matter to him, wasn’t  _ supposed _ to matter to him, and yet... Something very much bothered him about the fact that his friendships with them were based on a lie.

It wasn’t the lying itself that bothered him, of course. Using words to create false impressions- ‘dishonesty’, if one were to be crass -had always been one aspect of social interaction that came naturally to him, and caused no feelings of guilt. It was more... the idea of something being based on incorrect or, at least, incomplete data that made him slightly uneasy. The boundary conditions were wrong, and one couldn’t accurately predict the evolution of a system if one was working with incorrect boundary conditions. Any physicist could tell you that.

And Eobard prided himself on his ability to read and predict systems. More than anything else, it was the ability that enabled him to function successfully in a world that was ever-changing. But if something happened that meant he didn’t accurately assess the original situation, or a significant unexpected change took place... That was when he got lost. And that was exactly the position he was in now.

His friendships with Caitlin, Cisco and Barry were based on the initial condition that he was playing the role of Harrison Wells. But the reveal of his true identity had shifted the boundaries, changed the variables, and he had no way to predict how those relationships would evolve going forward. There were too many unknowns. Was his betrayal something they could ever forgive? What about his past? Was he even capable of making appropriate amends for the things he had done? Did he even want to?

And that was perhaps the question that he was stymied by the most. Spending more time with Barry, Cisco and Caitlin would provide most of the other answers he sought. There was little he could do but wait and react when he had the appropriate information. But his own wants and desires? Those were far more complicated.

Eobard had had a singular goal for so long now. Even before returning home had become his focus, he had had his rivalry with the Flash to guide him. His desire to wipe his enemy from the timeline was a distinct end goal. And when that had failed, correcting that mistake was the logical next goal. But there was no logical next step now. His own time and timeline were beyond his reach, perhaps forever. And an alternative goal was stubbornly refusing to present itself.

So, logic had failed him. The only alternative was to rely on his feelings, his emotions, and wasn’t that an unappealing prospect? Emotions were messy, imprecise, and tended to shift and change over time. But they were all he had to work with, so working out his next goal now had the necessary first step of pinning down exactly how he felt about the situation he found himself in. What did he want, and what did his current situation offer him? If those two were not in suitable agreement, what other situation might be better?

It should be a simple matter of weighing pros and cons against each other and reaching a conclusion. But narrowing things down to simply pros and cons was proving nigh impossible. To take the most significant and emotionally turbulent example, where should he class his relationships with Cisco, Barry and Caitlin?

He enjoyed their company; that was an uncomplicated confession and a definite pro. Their skills were useful to him, and he could be useful to them in return. That was simple quid pro quo, and there was certainly no need to get sentimental about how their gratitude had felt when he had helped them in the past. None at all.

On the other hand, they were a distraction. Tina had said it herself: he had temporarily compromised his own plans to save Ronnie and Martin Stein. Working out where he stood with Barry, Cisco and Caitlin going forward would waste valuable time he could spend on other plans. And whatever his end goal might turn out to be, minimising distractions was always a solid strategy.

But, the more he thought about it, the more Eobard was forced to reluctantly conclude that those relationships would always be a distraction. Whether he chose to attempt to continue them, or cut them off entirely, he would never be able to compartmentalise them as he had originally planned. And so it seemed that the opportunity to see how those relationships played out was a definite point in favour of remaining in his current situation. Remaining in the 21 st century.

Eobard shuddered. It was the last thing he had ever expected to consider: remaining in the 21 st century of his own volition. And yet... And yet. It did have its advantages. Cisco. Caitlin. Even Barry, who was still so much more complicated than Eobard could ever have imagined. Untangling his knotted fingers, he brought his hands out from behind his back and pressed them against his face.

He was spinning in circles, and he knew it, his thoughts always cycling around to the same question: where do I stand with Cisco, Caitlin and Barry? For all he knew, the three of them had decided to never speak to him again. It would be well within their rights, a small voice in his head pointed out, and he knew it was true. Eobard could hardly blame any of them for walking away from someone who had hurt them as badly as he had. It was the inescapable truth that he was the villain of this particular story. The mentor, the friend, the confidant, yes. But also the villain. And, as had been so pointedly observed by Martin Stein, to have a chance at truly being the hero, at redemption, he would have to regret his past actions.

Truth be told... Eobard wasn’t at all sure if that was the case. He had been so steadfast in his convictions for so long, so secure in the belief that he was simply doing what he had to, that even a spectacular failure such as this wasn’t sufficient to shake that loose. It seemed almost like betraying himself to even contemplate admitting that he had been in the wrong. Oh, many of his actions had been morally wrong, that was undeniable. But had they been the incorrect actions to take? At what point did the inherent immorality of taking a life override the fact that he had genuinely considered it the right course of action?

But those were deeper questions than Eobard was comfortable facing right now. The faint possibility that he might even be considering remaining in the 21 st century was enough to rock him to his core without the added complication of re-evaluating his entire personal morality. No, such considerations were best saved for another time. The most pressing question at present was one that could be answered with much less effort on Eobard’s part. He hated being out of control, but Cisco, Caitlin and Barry now held all the power in their relationships. They could choose to come down to the Pipeline in search of closure or even continuation, or they could decide that they wished nothing of the sort. All that Eobard could do was wait.

He rubbed his eyes, and resumed rocking back and forwards on his feet. He didn’t lack in patience- his fifteen years in the 21 st century had confirmed that beyond a shadow of a doubt- but unknowns? They built up, thoughts whirling and pressure building in his head, and there was nothing he could do about that while stuck in a cell. At least when he’d been using the wheelchair, the Time Vault had always been a place where he could go and pace to let off steam. But in his cell? He was stuck. Stuck pacing around the tiny space, stuck going in circles, when what he really needed was linear motion. New data to plot a path. An end goal to aim for. Because, once he finally had either of those, he would have a way to move forward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I ended up drawing heavily on comics canon and my own headcanons for this chapter, so I thought it would be good to explain where some of that stuff came from. Eobard being autistic is my own headcanon, but it's backed up so thoroughly by evidence from the show that I find it hard to believe he wasn't written (and portrayed) with autistic traits in mind. Follow this link if you're interested in reading some of my ramblings on the subject: http://autisticeobardthawne.tumblr.com/tagged/autistic-spectrum-headcanons/chrono  
> And then there's the stuff from the comics, specifically Eobard's relationship with his family and the social skills classes he was forced to attend as a kid. That's from The Flash (2011) #8, which is in the "The Road to Flashpoint" collected paperback. Definitely worth checking out, because that particular issue is a great summary of comics!Eobard's backstory and really shows the deep irony inherent in the Reverse Flash as a character.


	8. True Friends Stab You in the Front (Cisco)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cisco finally manages to work up the courage to go talk to Eobard for the first time since the Singularity.

Cisco stood in the intake, staring at the bulkhead door that led to the interior of the Pipeline. Usually, he hated that door. It was the very same one that he’d closed on Ronnie, so many months ago, and that was not a memory he needed reminded of. Especially now, after Ronnie gave his life to save them all using powers he wouldn’t have had were it not for Cisco’s actions that day.

But right now? Cisco was kind of relieved that the door was there. It gave him time to prepare, to gather his thoughts and his courage, before he had to face the man that was imprisoned on the other side.

And the last two times Cisco had been down here, the door had been there for him to lean against when that courage failed him and he just... couldn’t do it. Both times that he had tried to confront the man behind that door, he’d ended up sitting on the floor, leaning against the door, unable to go through it.

This time, though, he had to open the door. In fact, he’d deliberately engineered things so that, whether he liked it or not, he’d have to go and talk to the man in the cell. No use putting it off any more. Taking a deep breath, he tapped the door controls, took a single step backwards, squared his shoulders, and looked directly ahead at the cell that quickly came into view.

Dr Wells- Reverse Flash- Eobard Thawne- was sat leaning against the wall, but clambered to his feet when he saw that he had a visitor. Cisco forced his hands down and away from his chest, where they had ended up hovering protectively the second Eobard had moved towards him. Oh great, that was the last thing he needed to start doing.

“Cisco,” Eobard said, with a smile that was both pleased and surprised. It was such a familiar expression, such a “Dr Wells” smile that Cisco almost automatically greeted him by that name. Not even his general ‘I’ve been in a cell for over a week’ scruffiness detracted from the illusion. Dr Wells might have been tidy and clean-shaven most of the time, but Cisco remembered the first few weeks after the particle accelerator explosion, when Dr Wells had let grief and his own injuries get the better of him. Of course, now Cisco knew better. The Dr Wells he had visited in hospital, with his perpetually red eyes and messy hair and unshaven face, had all been an act. A ploy to gain sympathy for a life’s work apparently gone very wrong, to distract from how things had actually gone exactly according to plan. It hurt Cisco to think about just how thoroughly they had all been deceived.

“Cisco?” Eobard said again, this time a question, and Cisco realised that he’d been staring. He fumbled with the object he was gripping slightly too tightly, and held it up so Eobard could see what it was.

“I’ve brought you this. It’s a biomonitor, designed to warn us if your speed ever comes back.” Eobard’s slight frown shifted back to a smile, and he nodded, pleased.

“Caitlin determined I was telling the truth about the loss of my powers.” Cisco nodded. It had taken a lot of strength on Caitlin’s part to come back to the lab after everything that had happened, but once she was there she’d done great work as always. It had taken her a matter of minutes to make the initial determination, but she’d then run the rest of the sample through every test she could think of and a few more that she’d invented on the spot to double check her findings. And, for once, it turned out that Eobard had been telling the truth.

“Yeah. But we’ve only got your word to go on that your powers won’t come back of their own accord, so-” He wiggled the biomonitor, which looked approximately like an oversized wristwatch. “- we made this thing. It monitors your vitals, but more importantly it detects the energy emissions that cells give off when they’re storing speed force energy.”

“I’m impressed,” Eobard said. He looked it, too. “I hadn’t realised you and Caitlin had figured out how to do that yet.”

“Well, Dr McGee helped a bit with the physics side of things. Apparently she got some ideas when she realised that you charged your speed using tachyons. But Caitlin and I did most of the work,” Cisco added quickly, and then internally kicked himself. Why was he still so desperate for this man’s praise?

He covered up his slight wince by taking a few steps forward and depositing the biomonitor in the hatch they normally used for food. Then, remembering something, Cisco rummaged in his pockets and pulled out a second object, gently placing it in the hatch as well. He pressed the button to cycle the hatches, and then retreated back from the cell. He didn’t quite back off to his original position, but he was still standing a reasonable distance from Eobard. Even though there was a cell door between them, he couldn’t be within arms’ reach. He just... couldn’t.

“Ah,” Eobard exclaimed, when he saw the other object Cisco had put in the hatch. “My glasses.” Cisco nodded.

“I saw them lying around and just thought, you might, you know... Do you even need them?” Eobard answered his question by putting the glasses on before picking up the biomonitor.

“I do, actually,” he said, slightly absently as he inspected the biomonitor closely. “Harrison Wells was distinctly far-sighted, and I inherited that when I replaced him. It’s rather an annoyance, to be honest, as I had near-perfect vision before.”

“Well maybe you should have thought about that before you killed him and stole his body,” Cisco said, pointedly. He was starting to regret bringing the glasses. Standing there wearing them, examining a device that Cisco had made, Eobard looked far too much like Dr Wells for Cisco’s liking. The brief look that Eobard shot him was 100% Dr Wells as well, the look that Cisco usually got when he made a comment that Dr Wells had deemed slightly unfair or harsh. Yeah, well, murder was murder, and just because they hadn’t known about it until recently didn’t make Harrison Wells any less dead. That was still a strange thought, the fact that they could say that they had two men by the name of Harrison Wells currently in STAR Labs: one in the morgue, and one in a cell. Although the man in the cell really had no right to that name at all.

“What do I call you?” Cisco blurted out, surprising himself slightly. Eobard looked up again, this time looking Cisco in the eyes with a slight frown. “Only, I can’t call you ‘Dr Wells’, and it seems rude to just call you ‘Thawne’, and Professor Stein said you’re a professor too, but ‘Professor Thawne’ is a bit of a mouthful and...”

“’Eobard’ would be fine,” Eobard said, gently cutting across Cisco’s babbling flow of words. He smiled slightly, and was Cisco imagining things or was that expression slightly sad? “You know, I would have let you call me Harrison if you’d asked. It’s been a long time since I was just your boss.”

“Oh yeah? And what are you, then?” Cisco didn’t bother to keep the heat out of his voice. He could feel himself getting angry and upset, and he was done with locking all that down and pretending he was okay.

“I’d like to think I was your friend,” Eobard said, quietly, and yes, his expression was definitely sad. Cisco had no idea what to make of that, wanted to be angry, not nostalgic, so he shot back with the thing that had been very much on his mind in the hope of provoking Eobard into doing something, anything that wasn’t this ‘softly, softly, try not to upset him’ approach.

“Real friends don’t murder each other.” Eobard’s mouth moved in a silent ‘ah’, and he turned to face Cisco properly, letting the hand holding the biomonitor fall to his side.

“Cisco, I don’t know what you want me to say.” That was the opening Cisco had been hoping for.

“'Sorry’ would be nice! ‘Sorry for murdering you in another timeline Cisco.’ ‘Sorry I gave you nightmares for weeks, Cisco.’ ‘Sorry I threatened to murder you again when my plans failed, Cisco.’ Any of those would be a start!” Eobard had gone quiet and watchful, listening carefully to what Cisco was saying.

“Or how about ‘sorry I lied to you for three years about secretly being a supervillain’? That’s the sort of thing that tends to upset people! But we’ve been dead for centuries, so what does it matter what we think?” Eobard actually flinched. It was a small movement, so small that Cisco almost didn’t catch it, but it was a flinch nonetheless.

“I said that, didn’t I? Before I...”

“Before you stuck your hand through my chest and shredded my heart, yeah.” Cisco’s hands were hovering protectively in front of his chest again. Eobard’s eyes flicked downwards, noticing that but not commenting on it. Then some manner of gear must have turned over in his head, because he got that ‘I just figured it out’ look on his face that Cisco had seen so many times just before he supplied some solution to the meta human problem of the week.

“So that’s how you did it,” Eobard breathed, clearly talking to himself more than Cisco.

“Did what? Cisco asked, kind of annoyed that Eobard seemed to be trying to change the subject but curious despite himself.

“How you managed to find the right frequency to disrupt my powers like that. You used your memories of me killing you in the other timeline. That you were then able to turn that instinctively against me... It’s quite the remarkable gift you’ve been given, Cisco.”

“Yeah, well I kind of wish it came with a gift receipt.” Eobard looked puzzled.

“Really? I thought you of all people would be delighted to have powers.”

“Maybe, yeah! Maybe if they were cool powers, like Barry’s or yours. But all these ones have given me so far are horrible nightmares, so I think I’ll pass.”

“Oh, Cisco...”

“But you know what really scares me?” The heat was back in Cisco’s voice, and he might have started to sound slightly hysterical, but he didn’t care. “ _You_ gave me these powers. _You did_. And you’re a bad guy. What if that means...” He trailed off, unable to say it, but Eobard clearly realised exactly what he meant.

“ You’re not going to end up a villain, Cisco,” he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Somehow, that didn’t convince Cisco at all. “Where your powers came from doesn’t determine that. Look at Barry, or Ronnie and Professor Stein. Their powers came from the particle accelerator, from me, as well.”

“Three heroes to a whole lot of meta criminals isn’t exactly a great track record. And I’m... I’m not Barry.” Eobard fixed him with a look, the sort of ‘what I’m about to say is right and you should listen’ one that always preceded one of his pep talks.

“Cisco, listen to me. You have the potential to be every bit the hero that Barry ever was, is, or will be. And from what I’ve seen of your powers so far? You might just be the most powerful meta I’ve ever seen. In any time period.”

“That didn’t work out so well for Anakin Skywalker,” Cisco said, bitterly.

“Anakin was manipulated at every turn by forces beyond his control,” said Eobard, rolling with the metaphor. It was something Cisco had always appreciated, the way Eobard just went along with his references. Most people would give him a look, or complain at him for trivialising the situation, but Eobard seemed to understand that sometimes sci-fi extended metaphors were useful. “You, Cisco, can choose your own destiny. And I know you’ll choose to be the hero.”

“Full offense, but that would mean a bit more if it wasn’t coming from Chancellor Palpatine.” Eobard actually did look offended at that.

“Now that’s a bit unfair.”

“Is it, though?” Eobard pulled a face and seemed like he was going to argue the point, but then he sighed.

“You may have a point. But,” he said, a complicated and somewhat sad expression on his face. “Who better to have the measure of a hero than a villain?”

Cisco didn’t know how to respond to that, so he looked down at his hands, wringing them together. There was a long pause before he looked back up again.

“You know,” he said, just about managing to keep a wobble out of his voice, “you need to actually wear that biomonitor for it to be any use to us.” Eobard held his gaze for a second, but didn’t contest the change of subject. Cisco was glad he’d volunteered to deliver the biomonitor. Anyone could have dropped it off, but he’d volunteered because he knew that if he didn’t have a reason to go down there it would be weeks before he’d be able to talk to Eobard.  And that wouldn’t have done him any favours at all.

Cisco watched as Eobard took one final look at the device in his hand, and then fastened it around his wrist. Cisco wasn’t surprised that he didn’t have to tell him how to activate it.

“So,” Eobard said, conversationally, casually, but his expression was watchful, gaging Cisco’s responses. “Do I get any sort of reward for being cooperative? Or am I still paying off a debt in that respect?” Cisco snorted, bitterly.

“I don’t think you can pay off a debt that big.” But Cisco had talked to Joe about this sort of thing, and they’d agreed that it wouldn’t hurt to make Eobard’s living conditions slightly more civilised. He might be terrible and deserving of everything that he got, but there were laws about confinement and he was going to be in that cell for a long time. “But we’re willing to give you some sort of entertainment. Any requests?” Eobard looked relieved. He was probably bored out of his skull sitting in that cell all day with nothing to do but sulk.

“Music would be good. I have some playlists saved in the main computer system if you’d rather pipe it in via the speakers than give me additional electronics.” Cisco resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Of course Eobard had to make it obvious that he’d figured out the unspoken rules they were imposing on him.

“Yeah, sure. I’ll do that.” And he might have some fun with it, too, Cisco thought, realising that he’d just had a rather petty but entertaining idea. “Anything else?”

“There’s a book in my desk drawer; _The Martian_. I’d only just started it.” Cisco nodded, and then had another thought, this one not quite so entertaining. His face fell, and Eobard noticed. “Oh. We were planning to go and see the film adaptation together when it eventually came out, weren’t we? I suppose our plans have changed a bit now.”

“Dude, there’s no ‘our’ anymore,” Cisco said, with a frustrated sigh. “You ruined all that. Stop pretending like nothing’s changed.”

“I’m not,” Eobard said, quietly. “I’m acutely aware of that fact. You weren’t the only one hurt by what had to happen.” Cisco’s expression of incredulity was so extreme that it was practically a whole body motion.

“ _What?_ Do you even hear yourself? ‘Had to happen.’ It was your choice. You _made_ it happen.  You could have just asked for our help, but oh no, you had to be all supervillain about it. God! What were you so desperate to get back to, anyway, huh? Was it worth all of this?” Cisco made an expansive gesture, and realised that he had stepped closer to the cell, as if he was trying to get in Eobard’s face despite the door in the way. He held his ground, resisting the urge to flinch backward when Eobard also took a step closer to the barrier.

“I thought so,” he said, simply, and Cisco noted the very deliberate choice of tense. He decided to press his luck, try and get some more answers.

“Do you have a family in the future?” he asked, softly. “Is that why...?” A complicated expression crossed Eobard’s face, one that Cisco had no idea how to read. Then he shook his head.

“Yes to the first, no to the second. I have family, but they didn’t factor into my decisions at all.” He pulled a face. “You see, I may have been the elder brother, but my family situation wasn’t all that dissimilar to yours, Cisco.” Cisco... was actually less surprised by that than the fact that Eobard had actually volunteered information about himself, to be honest. Eobard had always been remarkably understanding when it came to his problems with his own parents and brother, and more than once he had sounded like he was speaking from experience, despite ‘Dr Wells’ being supposedly an only child.

“But...” Eobard continued, frowning slightly. “I’d rather not talk about them. Not the most pleasant of memories, you understand.” Cisco nodded. Eobard might be a supervillain, but he wasn’t going to interrogate him on a personal subject like that. Especially not one that had a tendency to hit very close to home. After a moment or two, Cisco realised that he finally had an opening to ask something he’d been wondering about ever since he’d learned Eobard’s true name and identity.

“Do I really know you?” he asked. “And not, like, backstory stuff, that doesn’t matter, although I do wanna know that eventually. How much of ‘Dr Wells’ was you, and how much of it was an act?” Eobard sighed.

“That’s a very good question, Cisco. I’ll let you know when I’ve figured out any sort of answer to it myself.” That definitely wasn’t the response Cisco had been expecting. It was so very unlike the man in front of him to ever admit that he didn’t know something. It was... weirdly comforting to know that Eobard was just as lost as Cisco was in the aftermath of everything that had happened. It was also kind of satisfying for him to know that he had played a part in putting Eobard in that position. It didn’t quite make up for all the wrongs Eobard had done to him, but it was a step in the right direction. Not that Cisco wanted to get caught up in a cycle of revenge, because it seemed like that was exactly what had gotten Eobard into the mess he was in, but still. Some revenge was justified, that was for certain.

“Well, you’ll have plenty of time to think about it,” said Cisco, finally stepping back from the cell. “Because even with that thing-” he gestured to the biomonitor- “you’re not getting out of here any time soon.” Eobard raised his eyebrows and grimaced slightly.

“That much has been made abundantly clear to me.” As Cisco turned to leave, Eobard cleared his throat awkwardly. “Uh ,Cisco?”

“Yeah?” Cisco folded his arms defensively, not sure what Eobard was about to say.

“I... I’m sorry. For being so flippant when you told me about your death in the other timeline.” Cisco blinked. Given Eobard’s history with apologies, or the lack thereof, that was the last thing he had expected to hear. And it seemed to be genuine, too. Eobard was fidgeting awkwardly with his fingers, clearly not comfortable with what he was saying but forging ahead anyway. “And... I’m sorry for killing you. I’ve got no memory of it, so I don’t know the circumstances that led to my alternate self making that decision, but...” He stopped, and took a deep breath, obviously cutting himself off before he got carried away with justifications. “I’m sorry.”

Cisco just looked at him. At the man standing awkwardly in front of him, the man who had gone from being one of his closest friends to his most dangerous enemy and then somehow back to something in the middle. God, this was such a mess. Eobard met his gaze, complicated emotions evident on his face and suddenly Cisco had to look away.

“I’m glad you didn’t leave,” he said, so quietly that he wasn’t sure if he’d actually said it aloud at all. And then he tapped the door controls and fled back into the corridor, where Eobard couldn’t see the dampness in his eyes.


	9. BONUS: Art

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I draw as well as writing, and I decided to have a go at drawing Eobard how he appears at this point in the story. He's almost as much a mess on the outside as he is on the inside. I would say I feel sorry for him but, you know, this is Eobard we're talking about. He entirely brought it on himself.

(This drawing is also on Tumblr: http://philcoulsonismyhero.tumblr.com/post/149822709446/so-it-turns-out-theres-another-advantage-to )


	10. Doctor's Orders (Caitlin)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now that they've determined that Eobard has genuinely lost his powers, someone needs to make sure his injuries from the final fight with Barry are healing properly. But can Caitlin really just treat Eobard as another patient when she has so much history with the man he was pretending to be?

Caitlin strode into the Pipeline intake and stopped before the door that led into the accelerator ring itself.

“Okay, Cisco,” she said, letting the PA system carry her voice back to the Cortex. “You can open the outer door now.”

 _“You remember the signal?”_ Cisco’s voice asked, concern evident in his tone. Caitlin had shoved her own worries down under what she thought of as her ‘doctor’s reserve’, so she was a little short with Cisco when she answered. The last thing she needed were his worries setting her off.

“Yes, Cisco, I remember the signal. And you’re not going to talk me out of this- someone needs to do it and it needs to be me.” Cisco’s sigh crackled slightly over the PA system.

_“Okay. I’m going to keep the sound muted at this end, but I’ll be watching you the whole time you’re in there. Be careful.”_

“I will,” Caitlin replied, and she tapped the controls to cycle the outer door. As she stepped through and it closed behind her, the first thing she noticed was the music coming from the speakers in Eobard’s cell. She frowned slightly. “Is that... ‘ _Never Gonna Give You Up_ ’?” she asked. Eobard, who had been sitting on the floor with his eyes closed, stood up slowly and stepped closer to the front of the cell.

“Caitlin,” he said softly, by way of greeting. He looked quietly pleased to see her, relieved almost, and Caitlin had no idea how she felt about that. “And to answer your question, yes, it is. Cisco’s idea, I believe. I asked for music, and he decided that would be an excellent opportunity to rickroll me. Repeatedly.” He grimaced slightly, and pulled a device out of his pocket. He clicked it once and the music stopped, and then held it up for Caitlin to see. It was a simple plastic switch. “I can switch the music on and off, but not skip tracks.”

Caitlin would have smiled, had she been remotely emotionally capable of that. It was such a Cisco thing to do. She’d have to congratulate him on the idea later. But for now, she had a job to do.

“I’m not here to talk; I’m here as a doctor. You’ve lost your healing abilities, and I wanted to make sure your injuries from the fight have been healing properly.” Eobard’s slight smile faded, and he nodded, business-like. His reaction said that he was disappointed, but not surprised. “Have you been in any pain?” Eobard made a so-so sort of gesture.

“Nothing major, but there have been some twinges in my ribs. I think I’ve simply bruised them but it’s hard to tell. My, ah, perception of pain might be somewhat abnormal, so I may have broken one or two and simply be underreacting.”

“Right. I’m going to need to take a look at that.” Eobard tilted his head enquiringly. “Cisco is standing by to open your cell for me,” Caitlin said, in answer to the unspoken question. “He tried to talk me out of this, but I don’t think you’re going to hurt me.” She looked him straight in the eyes, daring him to prove her wrong. He blinked slowly, and then shook his head very slightly.

“I have no interest in hurting you, Caitlin,” he said quietly, and then paused, a flicker of some emotion that might have been regret passing over his face. “Any more than I already have.” That hit home like a physical blow, and Caitlin had to freeze up to prevent herself from flinching. But she was detached. She had to be. The man in the cell was her patient. She wouldn’t, couldn’t, think of him in any other terms.

Temporarily looking away from Eobard, she made eye contact with one of the security cameras and gave it a Vulcan salute with the hand that wasn’t holding her medical bag.

“Step back from the door, please,” she said to Eobard, ignoring the smile on his face as he recognised the wordless signal that Cisco and Caitlin had been using for various purposes for years. He did what she asked, Caitlin stepping back as well, and the cell door opened at Cisco’s command. She stepped inside, and the door closed behind her. Eobard was leaning against one of the back corners, giving her as much space as he could. She refused to think about how easy it would be for him to hurt her. Even without his powers, he’d managed to take on the Arrow in hand to hand combat. She was now locked in a confined space with a very dangerous man.

“Take off your sweater and lift up your shirt,” Caitlin ordered briskly, rummaging in her medical bag for a stethoscope. Eobard did as she asked, using slow, careful movements that might have been due to his chest pains or might have been intended to put her slightly more at ease. Or most likely both. He folded his sweater, placing it carefully on the floor, and then lifted up the tank top he was wearing underneath, exposing quite a substantial amount of bruising across various parts of his torso. Caitlin also noted a scar on his right abdomen, a remnant of the injuries he’d inflicted on himself at Christmas. She was slightly surprised by that- she’d assumed that, like Barry’s, Eobard’s healing abilities would prevent scarring like that. It seemed he’d been telling the truth when he told Joe his powers had been unreliable for some time.

“Be careful,” Eobard said with a slight smile. “I’m ticklish.” Caitlin stopped rummaging and glared at him.

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Act like nothing’s changed. You’re not Dr Wells, and I’m not patching you up after some- some mishap in the lab! You’re a supervillain, I’m your doctor, and that’s it. You don’t get to talk to me like you’re... like you’re my friend.”

“I understand.” Eobard’s smile faded, replaced with that calm, watchful expression he always seemed to default to. “Dr Snow.” He inclined his head slightly in acknowledgement. Caitlin sniffed, swallowed the lump that had been forming in her throat, and set to work doing what she had come here to do.

With deft, experienced hands, she probed Eobard’s injuries, taking note of when he flinched and asking the occasional “does it hurt more if I do this, or this?” question. She used slightly more pressure than might really be required, and didn’t outwardly react to Eobard’s sharp intake of breath when she pressed against a particularly livid bruise on his upper left side. Inwardly, however, she felt a slight cold satisfaction. She didn’t enjoy causing pain, but in this instance... Well. Some minor discomfort was insignificant compared to the pain Eobard had caused her and the people she was closest to. It was like Cisco’s rickrolling. Small acts like that didn’t come close to evening the scales, but they did make one feel slightly better.

While she worked, Caitlin found herself thinking back to some of the previous times she’d examined the man that she now knew to be Eobard Thawne. She’d had losses of her own to deal with in the aftermath of the particle accelerator explosion, but work had always distracted her so she’d attempted to get involved with Dr Wells’s recovery. He’d kindly but firmly told her that he was in perfectly capable hands and to worry about herself, so she’d never actually seen his injuries first hand. He had let her see the scans eventually, but he’d always kept her at arm’s length- medically, at least- during his recovery. At the time she had assumed it was simply an extension of how private he was about his personal life, but now of course she knew better. ‘Dr Wells’ had been covering up the fact that he was healing far faster than a man with his injuries had any right to. She suspected that he’d drip-fed her scans from his recovery over a much longer period than they had actually been taken.

In the end, it had been more than six months before she’d had a chance to examine him for herself. He’d claimed to have dislocated his shoulder while exercising, and at the time she’d been surprised by how fit he still was. Dr Wells had always been athletic- before the accident he’d run to work more often than not- but even a paralysing injury hadn’t slowed him down. Caitlin had remarked on it at the time, and gotten a joke about his fast metabolism as a response. (Of course, now she knew that he’d been having a private joke with himself at her expense, which was distinctly irritating.)

Now, as she had then, when he turned around she noted the mess of scar tissue that crisscrossed his lower back, and couldn’t help but be reminded of the fact that all those months ago he’d ignored his own safety and run into a structurally unsound part of the facility in order to help with the evacuation. It was that selflessness that had seemingly cost him his legs. Caitlin frowned slightly as she listened to Eobard’s breathing with her stethoscope. Had it been selflessness? Or had he simply done it because it was in character, and would help to throw off any suspicions that might be directed his way? The worst thing was that it could easily be either. Or perhaps both.

Finishing her examination by checking that the bruises and abrasions on Eobard’s face and hands were healing properly, Caitlin packed up her medical bag and indicated that Eobard could put his sweater back on.

“You’re in luck,” she said, more because that was the natural turn of phrase than anything else. “You didn’t outright break anything, but two of your ribs are cracked. If you don’t do anything to aggravate them, you should be back to normal in around three weeks. You’ve also avoided any infections.”

“That’s good,” said Eobard, pulling his sweater over his head and further mussing his already distinctly untidy hair. “Thank you, Doctor.”

“I’d offer you painkillers, but if you’re managing with the pain there’s no need.” Eobard nodded. Satisfied that she’d discharged her duty as a doctor, Caitlin gave the camera in the cell a second Vulcan salute. Eobard stepped back without having to be prompted, and Caitlin quickly exited the cell as Cisco remotely closed the door behind her.

But then she paused before she got to the outer door. Turned back.

“Why?” she asked, her voice quiet and filled with emotion. She didn’t have to be his doctor anymore, so now she was free to be... Well, whatever they were now.

“That’s... a very large question,” Eobard said with a sigh. “And not one I have any idea how to answer.” Caitlin dropped her bag and folded her arms, glaring at him.

“Really? What about ‘how could you?’ Or ‘did we ever really matter to you at all?’ Are those easier?” Her voice was stronger now, her tone confrontational.

“Yes,” Eobard said, simply.

“Yes, what? Yes, they’re easier questions, yes, we mattered to you, what?” Eobard took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He looked... deflated. Small. Whatever arrogance and drive had sustained him through the events of the past month was gone, leaving only a deep weariness in its place. Or at least that was the impression he wanted to give. Who knew whether he was even capable of showing his genuine emotions after so long playing a part?

“Yes, you mattered to me. I... don’t want you to think that I never cared. I did.” A pause. “I do.”

“Well, you’ve got a lousy way of showing it.” Caitlin’s glare softened slightly. She didn’t want that to matter to her, she didn’t want to value her relationship with this man, but... But. He’d been her friend for so long that she couldn’t not.

“I know,” said Eobard softly. There was a long pause as he returned her gaze, a lot of unsaid things in his expression. Caitlin took the opportunity to ask him something that she’d been wondering about for a long time.

“Is that why you tried to get me to take that job at the university?” she asked. Eobard nodded.

“That’s right. I... was hoping I could spare you from further heartbreak because of my plans.” He paused, and then said quietly, sadly, “Ronnie was... never meant to be a casualty.” Caitlin stiffened, her arms tightening around her chest and her hand gripping her upper arm so hard she was almost causing herself pain.

“You don’t get to say his name,” she managed to say, almost whisper, cold anger in her voice. “You took him from me _again_ . I don’t care if it was part of your plans or not. You’re the one to blame.” Eobard actually flinched backwards at the intensity in her voice, and Caitlin took a step closer to the cell. “You keep _ruining my life_. Every time I’m happy, every time I find a life I’m comfortable with, you end up taking it away from me.

“I _liked_ what we had. Barry, Cisco, you, me- that was my life and I was _happy_ . I’d found meaning again, something to take pride in, whether I had Ronnie or not. And you might not have meant to take Ronnie away, but Barry, that life, ‘Dr Wells’? I’d have lost all of that if you got what you wanted. Did you even stop to think about the consequences for me? For Cisco? He loves you like a _father_ . You’re one of my _best friends_. We care about you, and you never even stopped to think about how we’d feel?” Eobard just stood there, his face almost blank, motionless in the face of her grief and anger. She knew him well enough to know that that meant he was listening intently, but whether her words had any emotional impact? That was harder to tell.

“I...” he started to say, and then trailed off. His face made several complicated expressions and then he tried again. “I... didn’t intend to care. You, Ronnie, Hartley, Cisco... Barry. I didn’t want to care about any of you. I needed you, but I always knew there would come a point where you would stop being useful and start getting in my way. When that point came... I wanted the decision to be simple.” Eobard was holding Caitlin’s gaze, and somehow she knew that for once he was being genuine. She felt her earlier anger not lessen, but recede slightly. Finally, she was getting some answers. And answers she could work with, use to help fill some of the voids she had been left with. One might call it a cold comfort, but it was comfort nonetheless.

“But-“ Eobard continued with a sigh- “it wasn’t quite as easy as I hoped. I want you to understand- I’ve never had trouble rationalising necessary actions, even when they go against what I may want. But... that doesn’t mean that I was unaffected every time my actions hurt the people that matter to me. And my willingness to do whatever I had to do... should not be taken as evidence that I didn’t care.”

“That’s... not how that usually works,” Caitlin said, her tone still intense but her words lacking the heat they’d had before.

“Well,” Eobard said with a slight smile. “I never said I was neurotypical, did I?” Caitlin had laughed at that line in the past. It was Dr Wells’ favourite response to when someone pointed out one of his many idiosyncrasies. Which didn’t happen often, but he’d said the line enough times that it had been the title of a chapter in his biography.

Now, though, the familiarity was anything but comforting. It was yet another reminder that the supervillain in the cell, the man who should by all rights be nothing more than an ominous stranger, was someone she had until recently considered one of her closest friends. And that was... difficult. Especially since she had been the last person to believe that he was anything other than what he appeared to be. Caitlin sighed. She was still angry at Eobard, and she would be for a very long time, but there was something almost tragic about the situation he’d gotten himself into. He’d been so set in his ways, so convinced that his solution was the only solution, that he’d never even considered any alternatives. And that was why he had lost.

“You never even considered asking for our help, did you?” Caitlin asked, watching for Eobard’s reaction. He blinked in surprise at what was from his perspective a non sequitur. But he adapted quickly, like he always did, and shook his head slowly.

“I... No, I didn’t.”

“You should have,” Caitlin said, slightly surprised at the intensity that had returned to her voice. “We were your friends; I was your doctor! We could have helped you stabilise your powers, helped you find a way home without putting more people at risk.”

“Would you have?” asked Eobard, with a quiet intensity of his own. “If I’d told you the truth about my powers, about my past... I’d have ended up in this cell much sooner, if Barry didn’t just kill me outright in revenge for his mother.”

“ _And that would have been better_ ,” Caitlin insisted. “It would have taken time, but we would have forgiven you. And then we would have helped you. God, you don’t have to be the one in control all the time! If you would just trust other people...” Eobard looked back at her, frowning slightly.

“I’m trusting you now. My fate is entirely in your hands.” Caitlin sighed, exasperated.

“That’s different. You don’t have a choice now. Can you honestly say that if you had any other way out of that cell you wouldn’t be taking it?” Now it was Eobard’s turn to sigh, this time with resignation.

“No, I can’t.” Then he tilted his head slightly, seemingly remembering something. “Although, there were a few occasions where I was almost forced to reveal myself before now. After Christmas, when Barry was training with the missile drones, for instance. Had his life been in genuine danger, I would have used my speed to save him regardless of the consequences for my, ah, secret identity.”

“So what lie were you planning to tell us?” Caitlin asked, not bothering to keep the bitter note out of her voice. Eobard quirked his eyebrows, slight amusement on his face.

“Actually, I was planning to tell you the truth. Minus a few... unsavoury details, that is.”

“Well, why didn’t you?” Caitlin asked. “Why was that only a contingency plan?”

“I suppose... I had become comfortable with the lie that I was already telling.” His face did something complicated again. “I liked being... if not Harrison Wells then at least... being the person you thought I was. You’re not the only one who misses the way things used to be with the four of us.”

“You’re the one that ruined it,” Caitlin pointed out, unsympathetically matter of fact. She had little patience for Eobard feeling sorry for himself, especially since he seemed to most regret what he himself had lost, rather than the losses he’d caused to others. “But you can fix it, too.” Eobard froze, clearly surprised by that statement.

“I... was under the impression that my actions were considered unforgivable.”

“They are. _Now._ But forgiveness can be earned. We all eventually forgave you for your part in the accelerator explosion, but only because you actively worked to earn that from us. You confessed, you proved through your actions that you wanted to make amends. If you do that again, you might not be as cut off from your home as you think you are.” Caitlin waved at the security camera, and the outer door opened once again. She wasn’t sure if she could say the thing she wanted to say next without an escape route.

“Home is where you feel loved,” she said, looking Eobard right in the face. “There are people here who love you. Don’t be so quick to discount that.” And with that, she turned and walked out of the Pipeline, barely stopping to pick up her medical bag. She didn’t need to look back to know exactly the expression that would be on Eobard’s face. Dr Wells had almost always listened to her when she had something to say to him. She only hoped that Eobard was the same.


	11. Eobard

Eobard sat on the floor of his cell, his back against the wall, his elbows on his knees, and his face in his hands. The lights had been dimmed for hours now, meaning that it was probably well past midnight, but he just couldn’t sleep.

Insomnia was nothing new to Eobard, of course. He’d always had a very active mind, and stopping thinking long enough to get off to sleep was a bit of a challenge. But he’d gotten a handle on it eventually, relying on a strict routine in the evenings that helped him slow down and eventually switch off. Of course, one’s routine tended to be disrupted rather considerably by sudden long term imprisonment.

It hadn’t been too much of a problem before now. The final fight with Barry and the loss of his powers had taken a lot out of him, leaving Eobard much more tired than usual. But nearly two weeks had passed and that initial exhaustion had been replaced by an overwhelming restlessness. Put simply, he was bored. There was so little for him to do in his cell, and running at any speed (his usual cure for restlessness) was off the table for the foreseeable future. He’d briefly considered asking if he could be allowed to run laps of the accelerator ring, but his access to technology was being limited as much as possible. Giving him access to an entire particle accelerator would be breaking that rule in a big way.

No, running wasn’t an option that was available to him. And so he had very few options for burning off his excess energy, and pacing around such a small space could only do so much. But being unable to tire himself out physically was only part of the problem. What Eobard really needed was a way to distract himself from his thoughts. They were not particularly fun thoughts to be having.

Cisco and Caitlin’s visits had been both everything he had hoped for and everything he had feared. On the one hand, at least he now knew that they were both willing to give him a chance, both open to the prospect of rebuilding their friendships now that they knew his true identity. But on the other hand, it was clear that doing so would require a lot of emotional labour on Eobard’s part. If he wanted to regain their friendship, he would have to make amends for the hurt he had caused not just to Cisco and Caitlin themselves, but to other people as well. Make amends, and show remorse.

Genuine remorse had always been complicated for Eobard. Did he regret some of his past actions? Of course. There were certain deaths that had been unnecessary, certain events that had come to pass as a result of his actions that he had never intended, and he regretted those, sometimes deeply. What had happened to Ronnie, for instance, had genuinely upset him because he had never intended for Caitlin to suffer because of his plans. But there was a difference between regretting the consequences of one’s actions, and regretting the actions themselves.

It all came down to his ability to rationalise his actions, to convince himself, logically, that the course of action he was taking was the correct one. Regardless of the consequences, he genuinely believed that every action he had taken since becoming stranded in the 21 st century had been the right one. Or did he?

Eobard sighed, rubbing his face with his hands and then letting them fall into his lap. He closed his eyes and leant his head back against the wall. The seeds of his current thoughts had been planted a long time ago, much longer than he cared to admit, and had only been encouraged by his assorted recent visitors. And now he was second-guessing himself. Thinking back to the decisions he had made, the actions he had taken and wondering... Wondering if there might have been better options.

It wasn’t a pleasant feeling. The idea that he had done what he had to do, no more and no less, had been such a consistent thread in Eobard’s thoughts for so long that he had become dependent on that reassurance when things became emotionally complicated. Yes, he might have started to feel bad about certain things (unbidden, a list of 17 names ran through his mind), but his actions had been necessary. The only course of action available to him. The  _ right _ thing to do.

He couldn’t fall back on that rationalisation anymore. Every time he thought back to certain actions he had taken, there was a small voice, a niggling thought, suggesting that maybe, just maybe, there might have been an alternative. That that person needn’t have died. That that lie hadn’t been necessary. That there might have been a way to achieve his goals without hurting the people he had become close to.

Eobard made a sound that was half sigh, half snarl, and bumped the back of his head against the wall a few times. In the end, whether he genuinely regretted his actions or not all came down to the messy subject of empathy. The ability to understand and to share the feelings of others. And Eobard had always known that he experienced empathy in an atypical way- it was part and parcel of being autistic, after all. He’d gotten used to the fact that sometimes he would be deeply affected by what happened to another person, and sometimes he’d feel nothing, seemingly at random. It didn’t make the whole situation any less difficult to navigate, but at least he knew that was normal for him, something that was hardwired. Something he couldn’t change, and shouldn’t feel bad about. Different was not inherently wrong.

In fact, Eobard had often been grateful for his own low empathy. It meant he didn’t get caught up in the emotions of people around him, didn’t get his judgement clouded and his objectivity impaired, and that came in handy in high-stress situations. Someone needed to keep a cool head, to focus on finding a solution, and he was happy to play that role.

But it also meant that other people’s feelings were low on his list of priorities when making decisions. Each time he had been faced with a difficult situation, his first and foremost concern had been resolving it as efficiently and tidily as possible. Someone uncovered his sabotage of the particle accelerator? Fire them and ensure that no one would ever believe their claims. A dangerous metahuman was loose in the facility? Release another meta and pit them against each other to buy time until a better solution presented itself. It was simple arithmetic, straightforward logic. Every problem has a solution, and when time is of the essence emotions are messy and unnecessary and best left out of decision making. The fact that the solution caused someone distress was secondary to the fact that the solution had solved the problem.

Or it had been, until now. Eobard didn’t know whether it was spending so much time in the company of highly empathetic people like Barry and Cisco, or some residual fingerprints of Harrison Wells, or something else entirely, but it was like a switch had been thrown in his mind. Well, that was perhaps the wrong metaphor. Flicking that particular switch led to situations like the one with Grodd, where even the smallest amount of suffering the gorilla endured had affected Eobard deeply, to the point where he could not in good conscience allow the experiments to continue. No, this wasn’t hyperempathy. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that a dial had been turned, clicking up a few notches until Eobard found it harder to rationalise actions that had led to other people being hurt.

And, if he was being honest, this wasn’t all that recent a development. For the better part of six months, now, Eobard had found himself considering nonlethal solutions. His usual approach had won out, more often than not, but the fact that he’d even stopped to think of alternatives? Well, it seemed that acting as a mentor to a superhero who was incapable of not caring deeply had rubbed off on him somewhat. It was more than a little disconcerting.

Because Eobard had always been more than capable of rationalising murder. And that was down to a concept that had always seemed self-evident to him: the idea that every life was of equal value. Yes, a particular person might be a stranger to you, but they had family and friends of their own who would miss them if they were gone just as much as you would miss someone close to you. And if every single person matters as much as the next, well then. If you can rationalise killing one person, what makes the next one any different? Even if that person was someone who had become important to you, personally. To Eobard’s mind, it was almost selfish to spare the life of someone close to you if you would kill a stranger who posed a similar threat to your plans.

But things had become more complicated recently. The simple logic of ‘if a person gets in my way, killing them is the quickest and most efficient solution’ had started to break down in the face of the deep and complicated grey areas inherent in his relationships with the people he had met in the 21 st century. The simple truth of the matter was that Eobard had never had people he had considered friends in the way that he thought of Cisco and Caitlin, and even Barry. He’d grown to care about them, perhaps more than he had ever cared about anyone else in a life largely devoid of interpersonal connections.

Which meant that his low empathy was now much more of a hindrance than a help. He cared about them, that was undeniable, but actually understanding, empathising with their emotions? That was difficult. Try as he might, he couldn’t put himself in Barry or Cisco or Caitlin’s shoes. All he could work out was how he would react in their situation, how he would feel in their position, and that was no use whatsoever. He’d tried and failed to understand how they would react to a betrayal once before, when he had confessed that Hartley had warned him about the particle accelerator. He’d assumed they would react like Hartley, be angry, want to hurt him in return, but that had been very far from the truth. And it had taken Barry to point that out to him, to set him on the right path to re-earn their trust.

It was fortunate that he once again had someone else’s suggestions to fall back on. Caitlin had told him in no uncertain terms that the way to rebuild was to make amends, to prove to the others that he understood his actions had been wrong and that he was willing to do something to make up for that. But would he ever genuinely regret the things he had done? His means could have been more merciful, yes, but the ends he had been aiming for? Whether that was regaining control over his own destiny or simply returning home, Eobard felt he had been entirely justified. He had as much right as any other person to try and fulfil his own desires, and refused to be demonised for that.

But did Caitlin and Cisco really expect him to apologise for that? Surely they knew that asking him to accept that his goals of the last more than twenty years were inherently wrong was too much to ask. It was much more reasonable to assume that it was his methods they wanted him to make amends for. The lives he had taken, the lives he had changed, the lives he had ruined… Caitlin and Cisco cared, and cared deeply, even for strangers. The idea that Eobard did not, that he formed emotional connections only to people he was close to and was largely incapable of empathising with strangers, that was what they were having trouble accepting. But there had to be some way of meeting them in the middle, of combining their approaches, of coming to a compromise. Did it matter that Eobard would never truly regret his actions if he still made some effort to make up for them? If he let the regret he felt for the unintended consequences guide his decisions going forward, would that be enough?

Because Eobard was still not sure if he truly regretted the majority of the actions he had taken. Yes, he might be second guessing his methods, but when it came down to it he had made the decisions that he felt were right in the moment. Hindsight was 20:20, as the expression went. It was easy to second-guess oneself after the fact, forgetting that the initial decision had been made under time pressure and without any knowledge of the outcome that followed. Were he to be placed in the same situation again, Eobard wasn’t sure if he’d do anything differently. Except for the attempt on Barry’s life which had landed him in this mess in the first place, that was, but Eobard tried very hard not to think about that particular decision because it still made him deeply angry with himself.

He should have known something like that would have happened. He’d spent his entire life studying the Speed Force, for crying out loud. He should have realised that an action such as that would have consequences. But no. He wasn’t going to dwell on something he couldn’t change. Trying to kill Barry, killing Nora, framing Henry... It had been a series of decisions he had made while in a very emotional state. He’d been angry, so angry that killing Nora had simply been lashing out, trying to find some way to  _ hurt _ Barry even if the man himself was now beyond his reach. Yes, part of him had known that a tragedy like that was just as likely to prevent Barry from becoming the Flash, but at the time that had been far from his first thought. But then his mind had caught up with his emotions, and he’d picked up the knife rather than using his hand, ensuring that Henry Allen would be blamed for the death and Barry’s life would be disrupted even further.

Henry Allen... Eobard suddenly sat up, letting his knees straighten until his legs were flat on the floor. Now there was an avenue he hadn’t considered.

Eobard’s mind was racing now, spinning into high gear as it always did when a new piece of information became available. He wanted to make amends, to do something that would be seen as making up for the hurt he had caused, in the hope that he could repair his relationships with the team. But Barry was still the ultimate unknown variable. Cisco and Caitlin were open to rebuilding, yes, but if Barry wasn’t that would make things very complicated. So his future now hinged on winning back Barry’s favour. And what better way to do so than to give him back one of his parents?

Eobard was actually surprised that he hadn’t thought of it before now. A few months ago, after the incident with the Trickster, he had actually met Henry for the first time and been surprised by the twinge of guilt he felt about framing him, robbing him of his career as a doctor and his life with his son. And Eobard hated feeling guilty.

So he’d done something about it. He’d recorded a video for Barry, confessing to Nora’s murder using Harrison Wells’s name. (He might have felt guilty about that as well, had he not shed any guilt about tarnishing the dead man’s reputation a long time ago.) And then, working on the very probable assumption that ‘Harrison Wells’ would be declared dead upon Eobard’s return to his future, Eobard had incorporated that message into Harrison’s will, ensuring that Barry would only come across it in the event of his ‘death’. The message was one of various fallbacks and fail-safes that Eobard had set up, a system that had become irrelevant once he became stranded in this time, hence why he’d largely forgotten about it until now.

But that message was now the base upon which Eobard could build a course of action. The message itself was out of date, of course, as it assumed Eobard himself was no longer in this time period, but the general idea of confessing to Henry’s murder was sound. After all, a confession had worked the last time he had lost the team’s trust. Why not this time?

The best thing was that this plan would work regardless of how Barry currently felt about Eobard. Even if Barry hated him- which, to be honest, was extremely likely- getting his father back was undeniably a good thing. Suddenly, Eobard had the power to influence their relationship again. It was a relief. And the fact that this would make Barry happy and improve Eobard’s standing with the team all in one fell swoop? Well, that was a win all around.

Except, it wouldn’t be a win for Eobard if his confession landed him in Iron Heights. No, that was far from a desirable outcome. He’d resigned himself to incarceration, yes, but an actual prison was far different from remaining in STAR Labs, still in the midst of everything that was going on. So some finesse was required here, some clever manoeuvring. He needed a plan, to work out what he wanted and what he had to negotiate, and then to run enough scenarios in his mind that he could be reasonably certain he’d predicted the reactions he would get.

Eobard clambered to his feet, pacing up and down the small cell and gesturing with his hands as he started to collect his thoughts. He definitely wasn’t going to get any sleep tonight now, but this was good. This was progress. Best of all, it was progress that could be made without too much further analysis of his own emotions and morality. Yes, that was something he was going to have to face eventually, but for the time being he could put such concerns to one side and focus on more practical matters. For the first time since he had been returned unexpectedly to this cell, Eobard felt he had control over his own situation again. Under his own steam, on his own terms, he finally had a way to move forward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been pretty much two months since I last updated this story, and I'm terribly sorry. Life did that thing that it does where it gets in the way, but I've be no means abandoned this! I've got a whole bunch more chapters planned, and they will appear eventually. I can't promise soon, or with any regularity, but they will appear. I'm deeply invested in this story and how it's going to play out.   
> I hope this chapter was worth the wait. :)


	12. Interview With A Supervillain (Iris)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Iris might not have superpowers, but she is a reporter. And if there's one thing she can do, it's get an interview out of anyone. Even a sulking supervillain determined not to give up information easily...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter took so long. Life happened, and then exams and then Christmas... All the usual excuses. But it's the longest chapter yet, so enjoy!

Iris could definitively say that the last few weeks had been the busiest of her career as a reporter so far, and maybe even of her life. After all, it wasn’t every day that your city nearly got swallowed up into a Singularity. Even before they’d fully recovered from the shock, everyone at CCPN had launched into high gear. Larkin had them run off their feet reporting on the disaster itself, spreading missing persons reports, following the relief and recovery efforts… Even the sports reporters had been pulled off their usual stories and diverted onto covering the city’s response to the Singularity. Normally a consistent friendly presence in the office, these past few weeks Iris had barely even seen Linda in passing, what with one of them always dashing off in order to chase a new angle or story.

In many ways, Iris was glad to be busy. It would have been all too easy to be left feeling powerless in the wake of something as destructive as the Singularity, so at least this way she felt like she was doing something, that she was making a difference. It was the same attitude that she saw in her dad and Eddie. (When she saw them, that was- CCPD was even more run off their feet than CCPN was, what with having to try and contain the chaos, not just keep track of it.) The three of them couldn’t keep up with the science, and had no superpowers, but they did have jobs that let them help people. They were all leaning on that pretty heavily to help deal with all the craziness.

And then there was Barry. Witnessing his mother’s death first-hand, and then the Singularity and Ronnie’s sacrifice on top of that... It had all taken its toll. Iris was worried about him. As far as she could tell, he was barely sleeping, instead putting every hour he possibly could (and then some) into trying to rebuild the city both as Barry Allen, CSI, and as the Flash. And on the rare occasions that Iris or her dad could get him to slow down long enough to talk, it was obvious that he was blaming himself for everything.

It was no use trying to get him to stop. In fact, Iris wasn’t even sure that she would if she could. As much as it pained her to see Barry hurting, there was no denying that he was in part responsible for what had happened. But it was a small part. Barry couldn’t have known what his actions would unleash, and he was literally running himself ragged trying to make up for them. No, as far as Iris was concerned, the lion’s share of the blame for everything that had happened to their city? That fell squarely on the shoulders of Eobard Thawne.

Iris still wasn’t sure what to make of Eobard. The Man in Yellow had haunted her nightmares as well as Barry’s for years, and she’d never been entirely sure if she believed in his existence. But there he was, standing right in front of them, wearing the face of a man they had thought they had known. Not that Iris had known Dr Wells particularly well, though. She’d met him multiple times while Barry had been in his coma, but she’d never really had a chance to get to know him as a person. In fact, outside of that one press conference at CCPD, she’d barely spoken to the man at all since Barry had woken up.

In a way, that made things easier. Wells’s betrayal wasn’t personal to her in the way it was to Barry, to Cisco, to Caitlin. Even to her dad, who Iris could see was still blaming himself for entrusting Barry to STAR Labs even as his gut told him that Wells was not to be trusted. No, Iris didn’t feel betrayed. She felt attacked. The man they now knew as Eobard Thawne had hurt her family, and there was no way she was going to take that lying down.

The more she saw of what had happened to the city, of how her family and friends had been hurt, all because of his plans, the more Iris became determined that she was going to hurt Eobard back. Or at least make sure that he couldn’t hurt anyone ever again. And so she did her research. In whatever downtime she could find (in between work and trying her best to be there for Barry and whatever sleep she could manage), Iris went back through Barry’s files, watched old interviews, anything that might give her a hint of something she could use against the Reverse Flash.

There wasn’t much to go on. Eobard had played his role well, and the man behind the mask of “Harrison Wells” might as well have been a ghost. But just because she couldn’t glean anything about his life before he had murdered Nora didn’t mean that Iris wasn’t gathering ammunition. Oh no, the more she studied him, the more Iris began to realise exactly how to get under Eobard’s skin. 

Control. That was what it all boiled down to. Eobard had to be in control. And it gave Iris a lot of satisfaction when she thought about how a man like that would react to being imprisoned, to being entirely at the mercy of others. She could use that against him, use it to make him angry, throw him off balance. Both for the satisfaction, and also because that would be the best way of learning more about him. Iris hated unknowns, hated being presented with a mystery she couldn’t get to the bottom of, a situation or person she knew nothing about. And Eobard was nothing but unknowns. That was what had made him such a dangerous enemy. But if Iris could learn more about him, about his backstory and what drove his actions, he would become a known quantity. And known quantities could be fought, could be manipulated. The more they learned about Eobard, about who he was and how he operated, the less dangerous he would be in the future. At least, that was the theory.

And so it was that Iris made her way down to the Pipeline, just a little over two weeks after the Singularity. With her notebook in her pocket, and determination in her step, she strode into the Intake and pressed the control to open the hatch.

The cell beyond came into view and, upon noticing her presence, the man within clambered to his feet, and looked at Iris with mildly amused curiosity.

“Miss West,” Eobard said. “I must say, you’re not someone I expected to see. What brings you down here?”

“Curiosity,” said Iris, folding her arms and fixing him with her best journalist’s stare.

“Oh?” Eobard raised an eyebrow.

“That’s right,” she said. “You’ve become such a big part of our lives, and you know so much about us, and yet we know almost nothing about you.” Eobard chuckled.

“But Iris, you’ve known me for well over a year. And known of me for rather longer than that, I would wager.” His tone was that of someone indulging a precocious child, and Iris didn’t care for it in the least. She gave him a look.

“You know I don’t mean Harrison Wells. And don’t give me that crap you gave my dad about becoming him when you stole his body. I’m here because I want to know about Eobard Thawne.” Iris frowned. “What makes a man hate someone so much that he’s willing to travel back in time to murder that person as a child?” Eobard’s faint, obnoxious smile faded, replaced by a neutral expression and a cool stare.

“I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

“Oh, really?” said Iris, taking a step closer to the front of the cell. “Because from where I’m standing, you’re the one in the cell and I’m the one with all the power here.  All I need to do is say something to Eddie, or to Cisco, and your existence will become a lost less pleasant. You can say goodbye to your creature comforts, for one.”  She held Eobard’s gaze with a cool stare of her own, almost daring him to challenge her. He broke eye contact first, turning his head away and glancing briefly over his shoulder before facing her again. Iris resisted the urge to smile in satisfaction. First point to her.

“Well, aren’t you full of surprises,” Eobard said. His smile hadn’t returned, and there was only the faintest trace of the patronising tone from earlier. “I would have thought Joe would be the bad cop of the family.”

“I guess you don’t know us as well as you thought,” said Iris. That ‘bad cop’ comment had probably also been intended as an insult, but she chose to ignore it.

“I guess not,” said Eobard. He folded his arms and tilted his head slightly. “Well?” Iris frowned, not quite following his meaning.

“Well, what?” she asked.

“I believe you came down here with questions. I’m willing to answer them. Provided that you start somewhere a little easier than the reasons for my animosity towards the Flash because, I assure you, those reasons are numerous and complex.” Iris noted that, not only had he said “the Flash” and not “Barry”, but that a slight twitch of anger had crossed his face when he said it. Eobard wasn’t exaggerating when he said his hatred ran deeply, and Iris was itching to get to the bottom of that. But, for now, she was going to start simple. Ask easy questions, gauge Eobard’s responses, work out if her theories for how to manipulate him were correct. This was only the first engagement of a much longer game.

“Okay, let’s start with something simple,” she said, pulling out her notebook and opening it to the page where she’d jotted down a few of the things she wanted to ask. “When were you born? How old are you?” Eobard snorted. “What?”

“There’s nothing simple about age when one is a time traveller. It’s remarkably easy to lose track, especially when you’re also a speedster and therefore at occasional risk of time dilation. However, I was born in the year 2151, and I would estimate my age when I became stranded in this century as somewhere around 40.”

“So, you’re 55 now?”

“More or less.” Iris couldn’t help but raise her eyebrows.

“Well, you certainly don’t look it...” she said, partially under her breath. Eobard chuckled.

“Why, thank you.”

“So, what about family?” Iris asked, and Eobard’s smile faded once again. “Cisco said you told him you had a younger brother?” He nodded, once. “Are you going to tell me his name?”

“... Robern,” Eobard said, after a long pause, and with a slight frown of distaste.

“You two didn’t get along?”

“You could say that. In fact,” he said, his voice going hard and his stare intensifying. “I never had much of a relationship with my family, and I would prefer  _ not _ to talk about them.” Iris blinked. Well, then. There was obviously a story there. But, instead of pushing, she tried a slightly different angle.

“Then why were you so desperate to return to your own time? If it wasn’t because you missed your family?” Eobard sighed, irritated.

“Because I have a  _ life _ there. Why is there always the assumption that your life must revolve around other people?” He started pacing in circles in the tiny cell, gesturing emphatically with his hands as he spoke. “In my own time, I can study scientific fields that won’t be invented for another hundred years, use equipment that won’t exist for one hundred and  _ fifty _ years; I have the freedom to pursue the research that I want to be doing. I’m a  _ scientist _ . Imagine a scientist from today stranded in the 1850s. Or, even, imagine yourself stranded in the 1850s. No computers, no cell phones, barbaric social attitudes.”He ran a hand through the back of his hair, agitated. “Living in such a primitive time, wouldn’t it drive you  _ mad _ ?”

“Are you calling this century primitive?” Iris asked, somewhat offended on her society’s behalf, although she did see the point that Eobard was making.

“Yes,” said Eobard, bluntly. “You live in a country that doesn’t even have equal marriage rights, and refuses to legally recognise more than two genders. What else would you call that other than primitive and barbaric?” Iris sighed.

“You may have a point.” Then she paused for a second, realising that she now had an easy opening to ask about something that had been bothering her for a few weeks now. It wasn’t really part of her interview script, but curiosity was a powerful thing. “Um, speaking of marriage...” Eobard stopped his pacing and looked at her, raising his eyebrows. “Eddie told me that you showed him something- a newspaper- that proved that Barry and I get married in the future?”

“That’s right,” said Eobard with a nod, as a not entirely pleasant smile curled the corner of his mouth. “In my time, it’s a matter of historical record that Iris West married Barry Allen. In fact, I knew you as Iris West-Allen for most of my life.”

“What do you mean,  _ you _ knew me? Wouldn’t I be long dead by your time?”

“Oh yes, of course, but your work... Well,” Eobard said, with a laugh. “That lives on for quite some time.”

“Really?” asked Iris, fascinated despite herself. She knew it was dangerous to learn too much about the future, but this was the first time that she’d been offered knowledge of her own personal future. It was both terrifying and slightly intoxicating at the same time.

“Oh yes. In fact...” Eobard’s smile broadened, showing entirely too many teeth. “One book that you wrote was still being reprinted in my time.” He laughed. “I owe a lot to that particular book. In fact, I should probably thank you for it. Do you want to know what it was called?”

“What was it?” asked Iris, even though there was something about Eobard’s expression that suggested there was something about the answer she wasn’t going to like.

“It was called  _ The Life Story of the Flash _ ,” said Eobard. Iris’s eyes widened. “And it was quite a remarkable piece of work, given that you managed to weave such a compelling narrative without once giving away the fact that you were writing about your own husband.”

“Well, I’ve always been a good writer,” said Iris, slightly dazed but pleased. Was it vain to be proud of your future self’s accomplishments? If it was, Iris didn’t particularly care. But there was still that worrying look in Eobard’s eye, and she had a sense that the other shoe was about to drop.

“I always thought so,” said Eobard. “In fact, Iris, I believe it was your book that turned my casual interest in the Flash into the obsession it became. In many ways, it’s thanks to you that that little boy who was looking for a hero grew up to become the man I am today.” He grinned coldly at Iris, and she stared back, her mouth hanging open slightly. The thought that something she wrote might have been responsible for creating the man that had hurt Barry so badly... Then she frowned, stopping that train of thought right there.

“Oh, grow up,” she said, looking at Eobard with disgust. He blinked.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me. I can’t believe you’re trying to make me feel guilty for something that has  _ nothing _ to do with me.”

“But...”

“Don’t even try it. Your actions, the things you’ve done, the decisions  _ you’ve _ made? Those are on you.” Iris laughed. “You know, I’ve just realised this is the exact same thing you’ve been doing to Barry. Blaming him for the things you’ve done, trying to justify your actions by claiming he forced you into that position, making  _ him _ feel guilty. Well, guess what? You don’t get to shift the blame like that.  _ You _ made yourself the Reverse Flash, not Barry. Not your  _ Flash _ . Because I know Barry, no matter what timeline he’s from, and whatever he did to you? There’s no way it was as bad as any of the things you’ve done in the name of revenge.”

Eobard had gone completely still, his face blank as he stared at her with eyes that were almost impossible to read. “Speechless because you know I’m right?” Iris asked, and now it was her turn to wear the patronising smile. “You may be a genius, but when it comes to things like this you’re nowhere near as smart as you think you are. Now,” she said, gesturing with her notebook. “I believe we were in the middle of an interview? And don’t forget that it’s in your best interests to cooperate.”

After a few long moments, Eobard’s face twitched, and Iris got a brief glimpse of the deep and abiding rage that lurked beneath the surface. Then his expression settled into the tolerant but subtly insincere smile that she recognised from the various media appearances that “Harrison Wells” had made since the particle accelerator explosion. She also recognised that expression from other people she had interviewed- it was the look of someone who knew the interview was going to go ahead whether they liked it or not, and also knew it was in their best interest to be civil.

“This feels rather more like an interrogation than an interview,” Eobard commented, mildly, but Iris could also see that, down by his sides, he’d clenched his fists so hard that his knuckles were turning white.

“Call it what you like,” Iris said. “Either way, I’ll get my answers.”

“Planning on writing my biography, too?”

“No, I was thinking you’d just barely warrant a footnote in Barry’s.” She smiled at Eobard, and another flash of anger showed through the calm mask he was wearing. It might have been petty to enjoy getting under the man’s skin so much, were he not an unrepentant murderer. “So, questions. What were your parents’ names?”

“Theobald and Albertha Thawne,” he said, his flat tone indicating that he had decided to do the bare minimum of cooperating and nothing more. Iris couldn’t help but snigger slightly at the names.

“It seems old fashioned names really made a comeback in the 22nd  century... I always did wonder what sort of a name Eobard was. What did they work as?”

“My father was a politician and my mother a civil servant.”

“Eddie’s dad is a politician,” mused Iris. “Looks like politics runs in the Thawne family. Well, except for you and Eddie. The cop and the scientist.” Eobard didn’t bother giving any response to that. “What did your brother do?”

“I believe he joined the Science Police.” A connection sparked briefly in Iris’s mind. Perhaps that was why Eobard had been so dismissive of Eddie- his ancestor’s choice of career reminded him of the brother that he had never liked.

“You  _ believe _ ?”

“We didn’t keep in touch after I moved out.”

“Oo-kay,” said Iris, raising her eyebrows. “You really didn’t like him, did you?” Eobard’s mouth twitched.

“He was a brat. A thoroughly unpleasant child who still managed to be our parents’ favourite, despite his frequent misbehaviour.” It appeared his dislike for his brother had overridden his attempts to be subtly uncooperative. Iris frowned, feeling a tiny bit of sympathy.

“Sounds like you didn’t have a very great childhood.”

“I don’t like to talk about it,” Eobard said, firmly. Iris held up her hands.

“Okay, I won’t push. What about just before you left your own time? Were you in touch with your parents then?”

“No,” said Eobard, shortly. “By that point they’d both been dead for some years. A traffic accident,” he said, answering Iris’s next question before she even asked it.

“Oh,” said Iris. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” said Eobard, his voice hard. Iris couldn’t help but wonder if Eobard himself had had something to do with that accident, but she didn’t ask. Some things it was better not to know.

“Okay, moving on. What did you work as before you ended up here? I think Professor Stein said you were an academic? A professor?”

“That’s correct,” Eobard said, nodding. His voice betrayed a note of pride, despite his still stubbornly neutral expression.

“Was that here in Central City? At CCU?”

“Yes and no. I worked primarily at an institute called the Flash Museum, which was affiliated with Central City University. Most of my research was done at the museum, but I also taught at the university proper.”

“The Flash Museum? Wow... Wait until Barry hears about that.” Iris paused for a second, remembering something. “You know, you always seemed like you’d been a teacher. Something about the way you gave interviews, like you were more used to lecturing. I remember asking Barry about it one time, after he made me watch a documentary about STAR Labs. I said you reminded me of our old physics teacher. I suppose that explains it. You can take the professor out of the university...”

“Indeed,” said Eobard. His tone wasn’t quite friendly, but nor was it as standoffish as it had been before. Iris filed that away for future reference: Eobard actually seemed to enjoy talking about his old teaching career.

Scribbling that down, along with a few other final thoughts, Iris flipped her notebook shut and stuck her pen behind her ear.

“Okay,” she said. “We’ve reached the end of my list of questions.”

“Really?” asked Eobard, raising an eyebrow. “That was fast. I thought you were planning on interrogating me rather extensively.”

“Oh, I am,” said Iris. “But you’re just a curiosity project, and I’ve got enough information to be going on for now. I have a real job to get back to. And besides,” she said, smiling at him somewhat facetiously. “It’s not as if you’re going to be going anywhere.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t count on that,” said Eobard, with a patronising smile of his own. Iris frowned.

“You really think you’ve got a chance of escaping without your powers?”

“I do, actually,” said Eobard, arrogant as ever. “But escape isn’t what I had in mind. I was thinking more of a prison transfer. Serving out the rest of my, ah,  _ sentence _ in slightly more civilised conditions than these.” He gestured around his tiny cell. He had a point. Iris had wondered on more than one occasion if it was humane to keep people in such spartan conditions for any significant length of time. But then again, if anyone deserved it, it was Eobard Thawne.

“What makes you think you deserve anything better than this?”

“Well, the Eighth Amendment, for one thing. And,” he continued, when Iris rolled her eyes. “I would also be willing to  _ do _ something in exchange for an improvement to my living conditions.”

“Willing to do what?” Iris asked, intrigued. Eobard smiled, and tapped his nose.

“Ah, ah. This is something between myself and Barry.” Iris scowled at him.

“Barry doesn’t want to speak to you,” she said, and Eobard’s face twitched in a curious expression before settling back into the patronising smile.

“Oh, he’ll want to talk to me about this.”

“You’re not in a position to be cryptic,” said Iris, irritated. “Remember who’s the one in the cell here. So either tell me what it is you want to talk to Barry about, or I can guarantee you that it’ll be months before you see him, or maybe not at all. Because he’s not going to come down here of his own accord.” Eobard frowned slightly, as if he didn’t quite understand why that would be. Iris frowned. This guy was unbelievable. “After what you put him through with his mother,” she said, by way of explanation, “I think he’s worried that if he sees you again he’ll try and kill you.” That curious expression flickered on Eobard’s face again, and this time Iris got a better look at it. But no, that couldn’t be right, could it? Because she could have sworn that that looked like regret.

“Fine,” said Eobard, his tone entirely too agreeable, and Iris began to suspect he’d wanted her to pass this message on all along. “Tell Barry that I’d like to talk to him about his parents.” Iris went to angrily cut him off, but he raised a finger and continued. “Tell Barry that, if he agrees to my terms, there may be a chance that I can get his father out of prison.” Iris stared at him, dumbfounded.

“You would do that? You’d confess to Nora Allen’s murder?” Eobard smiled, and all of a sudden Iris could empathise with her dad’s repeatedly stated desire to punch that particular smile off of Eobard’s face.

“You said it, not me. Now, I think that’s something that Barry would be willing to talk to me about, don’t you?” Iris just stared at him. And then, barely stopping to hit the door controls on her way out, she turned and strode out of the Intake. If there was any chance of getting Henry out of prison, it couldn’t wait. For Henry’s sake, but mostly for Barry’s. He was in a pretty dark place right now. And a chance at getting his dad back? That was exactly what he needed.

Iris only hoped that Eobard’s self-interest could be trusted. Because she wouldn’t put it past the man to dangle the hope of Henry’s freedom in front of Barry just so he could take it away again. From everything she’d seen of him, it would be an entirely in-character thing for him to do. But then Iris thought about that brief flash of regret she’d seen on Eobard’s face when she had said that Barry wanted nothing more to do with him. There were definitely complicated emotions at play on both sides here. She sighed. And things were only going to get more complicated once Henry’s freedom was thrown into the mix. Because there was no way Eobard wasn’t going to leverage that for all it was worth...


End file.
